Railways allocation hiked to record ₹1.48 lakh crore

NEWDELHI: The Union Budget has allocated a record ~1.48 lakh crore for Indian Railways to raise its carrying capacity and improve the train travel experience.

Of this, ~1.46 lakh crore is capital expenditure, while ~2,028 crore is to reimburse operating losses on strategic lines and reimburse Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation for the operational cost of e-ticketing. In the last budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley had waived service charges on railway e-tickets to encourage cashless transactions. The charges waived were ~40 for AC class and ~20 for sleeper class.

Jaitley said a large part of the expenditure is for capacity creation, and mentioned different initiatives being taken. These include track doubling, and third and fourth line works of 18,000 km; 5,000 km of gauge conversion; redeveloping 600 railway stations, equipping them with Wi-fi and CCTV cameras; introduction of modern train-sets; and escalators for stations with footfalls over 25,000.

Jaitley said Mumbai’s suburban rail system is being expanded at cost of ~10,000 crore, and an additional suburban network worth ~40,000 crore was also being planned. Similarly, 160 km of rail network worth ~17,000 crore has been planned for Bengaluru.

“Once the 18,000km expansion and 5,000km doubling is done, railways will once again emerge as a preferred mode of travel... ~73,000 crore for security is historic,” said railway minister Piyush Goyal.