Parliamentary panel asks Railways to speed up station redevelopment projects

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A parliamentary committee has expressed concern that no land and airspace in and around the stations have so far been commercially developed as part of the station redevelopment programme.

Railway Convention Committee (RCC) in its latest report has asked the Railways to look into the matter with a sense of urgency so as to ensure that the station redevelopment programme as announced in successive rail budgets is truly achieved.

The redevelopment plan of railways envisages that the entire cost of station redevelopment will be met by leveraging commercial development of land and airspace in an around the stations.

The RCC headed by BJD MP Bhartuhari Mahtab has observed that for capacity augmentation and modernisation, railways require Rs 8.56 lakh crore between 2015 and 2019, out of which approximately Rs 1.2 lakh crore is estimated to be mobilised from extra budgetary resources, including public private partnership.

The 18-member committee has urged the Railways to expedite the completion of three joint-venture (JV) projects in port connectivity.

The JV projects including Obulavaripalle-Venkatchalam new line, Angul-Sukinda new line and Hridaspur-Paradip new line should be expedited so that railways capacity augmentation takes place as per the schedule, the panel in its report submitted to the Parliament said.

Taking note of the works on private freight terminals (PFT), the committee recommended that the completion and commissioning of 40 PFTs undertaken at the moment to be speeded up so as to serve the very purpose of the scheme.

Private freight terminals launched in 2010 aims to facilitate development of a network of freight terminals with private investment and provide efficient and cost effective logistic services.

The committee asked railways to make efforts to rope in more private operators to run the container trains so that there is further increase in the loading capacity and revenue earning for the public transporter.

The RCC suggested Railway Ministry to facilitate procurement of more rakes by various firms under liberalised wagon investment scheme so that more investment is made in the railways capacity augmentation programme.

The committee also suggested for according approval to the private companies for procurement of more rakes in future for induction in railways under the policy for automobile freight train operator scheme so that railways market share in transportation of automobile increases.