No question of privatisation of railways: Piyush Goyal tells Parliament

FM Sitharaman in her Budget speech on July 5 had said the government may use private investment in railway tracks

The government has no plans to privatise the Indian Railways, but is open to allowing private investment in setting up high-speed, semi-high speed lines, Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal said in the Lok Sabha on Friday. The minister added the government wants to convert the Modern Coach Factory (MCF) in Raebareli into the world’s largest in the next few years. During a discussion on the demand for grants for the Railways, Goyal said: “No one can privatise the railways.”

This comes at a time when the ambitious bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, at an investment of Rs 1.1 trillion,