Projects put on fast track

Construction of western and eastern corridors to begin this year.

The government will revamp the operations of Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL) to hasten the implementation of dedicated freight corridors (DFC), Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee has said.

While the construction of western and eastern corridors — the initial ones that received Cabinet approval in 2007 — will begin during the current year, the four DFCs linking other parts of the country will remain at the survey stage.

An allocation of Rs 150 crore, as against the revised Budget estimate of Rs 60 crore for 2009-10, has been proposed in the Railway Budget 2010-11 presented today. The government plans to execute the project through private-public partnership (PPP) under its special purpose vehicle, DFCCIL.

For Phase I of western corridor, agreement for a loan would be signed with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) next month, Banerjee said.

For the eastern corridor, negotiations for funding up to Sonnagar are on and the execution of the section up to Dankuni is expected during the year. Funding for this section will be arranged through domestic investment under PPP.

Preliminary engineering-cum-traffic survey (PETS) will be taken up this year for the remaining four corridors — north-south (Delhi, Haryana, UP, MP, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu), east-west (West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra), east-south (West Bengal, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh) and south-south (Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa), the railway minister said.

She also said there will be no forced acquisition of land for the projects. “We will negotiate with land owners and, if required, different options will be explored, including overhead alignment so that there is minimum inconvenience caused to the people.”

The Railway Budget announced further plans to set up two workshops for high axle load wagons required for moving traffic on the western and eastern freight corridors in Maharashtra and Dankuni.