PM constitutes IMG on Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has constituted a six-member inter-ministerial group (IMG) to do the preparatory work for setting up the Amritsar-Delhi-Kolkata Industrial Corridor that would promote industrial development in the densely populated states of North India.

The group consists of the secretaries of department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP), department of economic affairs (DEA), urban development, road transport and highways, shipping/inland waterways and the railway board chairman.

This group will examine the feasibility of the corridor along with the structural and financing arrangements that would be required to operationalise it at the earliest.

The group will give its report within a month.

The Amritsar-Delhi-Kolkata Industrial Corridor is patterned on the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC). The DMIC uses the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor as the backbone and is one of the most significant developments taking place in the sphere of industrialization.

In a similar manner, the Amritsar-Delhi-Kolkata Industrial Corridor will use the Eastern dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) as the backbone. The Eastern DFC extends from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni near Kolkata. Therefore, the Corridor will be structured around the Eastern DFC and also the highway system that exists on this route. It will also leverage the inland waterway System being developed along National Waterway - which extends from Allahabad to Haldia.

The Corridor will cover the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

This is one of the most densely populated regions in the world and houses about 40 percent of India's population. This is a region which needs a major push for industrialization and job-creation and the Corridor will act as a catalyst for this growth.

The corridor will cover the cities of Amritsar, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Ambala, Saharanpur, Delhi, Roorkee, Moradabad, Bareilly, Aligarh, Kanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Varanasi, Patna, Hazaribagh, Dhanbad, Asansol, Durgapur and Kolkata.