Railways to get Rs 20,000 cr in supplementary grants as capital expenditure

The Railway Ministry will get Rs 20,000 crore under the Second Trance of Supplementary Demand for Grants, taking its total allocation on capital expenditure to Rs 2,35,058 crore for financial year 2021-22.

The total reworking of railway's budget though will be Rs 40,575.93 crore after the Supplementary Demand gets approved by Parliament. “The balance amount will be reappropriated from existing allocations with the Railways. So, Rs 20,000 crores will come under approval from parliament and balance Rs 20,575.93 crores by reappropriating from existing grants,” said Rail Budget expert, M Nageshwara Rao. The reappropriation of existing funds is an indication of the reworked priorities of the Indian Railways.

After Parliament’s approval, there will be additional transfers of Rs 10,000 crore to the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh from the Gross Budgetary Support. This fund was created in 2017-18 with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore over a period of five years for critical safety related works. The annual estimated outlay for this fund was Rs 20,000 crore.

The Union Budget 2021-22 had allocated Rs 5,000 crore for this fund. With the allocation in the Supplementary Demand for Grants, the total monies going into the fund will reach Rs 15,000 crore in the current financial year. This will largely meet the expenses for Track Renewals (Rs 7,500 crore) and Bridge Works (Rs 1,200 crore).

Under the supplementary grants, major upgradation of stations on Indian Railways has been allocated Rs 12,000 crore and Rs 11,000 crore has been parked for covering the cost of 100 of train sets.

Rail Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, while addressing a group of corporate leaders from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Saturday, had said the focus was on improving the passenger experience at railway stations. According to Vaishnaw, spending on new lines, doubling of tracks and electrification others was on track.

With the stations at Bhopal and Gandhinagar redeveloped in terms of city integration and passenger flow, 40 more stations would be tendered shortly. 

He noted that for reducing cargo costs, it is important to raise the share of freight carried by the Railways. For this, the ministry was working on stepping up investment in new tracks, capacity, and other infrastructure. He highlighted that wagon designs are being changed to cater to different commodities and products.

Automatic block signalling on freight dense high utilisation network has a cumulative allocation of Rs 6,994.54 crore. This is spread over seven routes on West Central Railway (Rs 548.96 crore), East Central Railway (Rs 726.62 crore), Northern Railway (Rs 287.64 crore), two routes on West Central Railway (Rs 714.40 crore), Central and East Coast Railways (Rs 794.30 crore), North Western Railway (Rs 670.22 crore), South East Central Railway (Rs 575.28 crore), South Eastern Railway (Rs 836.60 crore), East Coast Railway (Rs 940 crore) and Western Railway (Rs 900.52 crore).

Large allocations under supplementary grants

Purpose	Amount
Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh	Rs 20,000 crore
Upgradation of Railway Stations	Rs 12,000 crore
Buying 100 train sets	Rs 11,000 crore
Automatic block signalling on freight dense high utilisation network	Rs 6,994.54 crore