By Mukesh Kumar Sinha
Indian Railways needs Rs 1,47k crore to finish projects: Railways Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu is candid in admitting that railways has been making new announcements in response to demands of members, and was staring at a “humongous” financial commitment. The State-run transporter needs Rs 147,187 crore for completing 347 pending projects relating only to laying of new tracks, gauge conversion and doubling of tracks. In the past railways could manage only Rs 5,000 crore annually for implementing all its projects.According to Joshi, due to large number of projects the financial spread has been thin which is resulting in difficulty to finish work in time. He defends rail officials arguing that the allegations of time and cost overruns in finishing projects were technically incorrect as work was being carried out in accordance with the money sanctioned. Failing to generate resources, he urged state governments to share land cost and 50% of the sum spent on construction to help the transporter to expedite its pending projects. The state governments are requested, from time to time, for sharing the cost of the projects, which they consider essential, but which we consider to be non-remunerative, admits Joshi, adding that he has written several letters to CMs. He outlined that steps have been taken to generate additional budgetary resources through state participation, public-private partnership, defence funding, declaring some ventures as national projects and implementation of bankable projects via Rail Vikas Nigam Limited “There are 347 rail projects worth Rs 1.47 lakh crore pending and we are planning to complete some of these works in the next fiscal,” Railways plans to invest Rs 5 lakh crore in capacity addition during the 12th Five-Year Plan. Railways has 43,000 hectares of vacant land which it is trying to use for commercial purpose.
