Railways to get Rs 20,000 crore in supplementary demand for grants

The Ministry of Railways will get Rs 20,000 crore under the second tranche of the supplementary demand for grants.

This will take the allocation for the railways’ capital expenditure to more than Rs 2.35 trillion in 2021-22.

After Parliament approves the supplementary demand, the railways’ budget will go up by Rs 40,575.93 crore.

“The balance will be re-appropriated from the existing allocations with the railways. So, Rs 20,000 crore will come under approval from Parliament and the rest by re-appropriating from existing grants,” said Rail Budget expert M Nageshwara Rao. The re-appropriation of the existing funds is an indication of the reworked priorities of the railways.

After the parliamentary nod, there will be an additional transfer of Rs 10,000 crore to the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh from gross budgetary support. This fund was created in 2017-18 with a corpus of Rs 1 trillion for critical safety-related works over five years. The annual estimated outlay for this fund was Rs 20,000 crore. The Union Budget 2021-22 had allocated Rs 5,000 crore to this fund. With the allocation in the supplementary demand for grants, the fund will have Rs 15,000 crore this fiscal year. This will largely meet the expenses for track renewal (Rs 7,500 crore) and bridge works (Rs 1,200 crore).

Under the supplementary grants, Rs 12,000 crore has been given for a major upgrade of stations and Rs 11,000 crore for covering the cost of 100 of train sets.