An inquiry in the Ministry of Railways has revealed that a special purpose vehicle titled Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd. has, so far, been set up for implementation of DFC projects, within five years from commencement of the works.
Construction of Western DFC comprising 1489 kilometres and Eastern DFC covering 1232 kilometres, already approved by the Union Cabinet in February 2007 and November 2007, will involve an estimated expenditure of Rs.30,000 crores at 2007-08 prices. Western DFC will connect Jawaherlal Nehru Port (JNPT), Mumbai to Dadri/Tughlakabad in Delhi area via Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Ajmer, Palanpur and Rewari. Eastern Corridor will connect Ludhiana to Sonenagar and extend to Kolkata to the proposed deep sea port in future. Eastern DFC will criss-cross via Ambala, Saharanpur, Khurja and Allahabad. Meanwhile, feasibility studies for DFCs on East-West, North-South, East-South and southern corridors are in progress. All DFCs will be double lines for hassle-free fast heavy haul traffic, said a senior Railway Board official.
According to the Ministry of Railways, funding arrangements have been tied up for both the Western and Eastern DFCs. Funds are expected to flow from the first quarter of 2009 (January-March 2009). The Western DFC will be funded by Japan and the Eastern DFC by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). For the ADB, this would be the sixth Indian Railways projects to be funded. It is already financing five railway projects. With funding having been tied up, the construction works on both the DFCs are to commence during January-March 2009, signaling that India is on right course of rail infrastructural development to meet the challenges of its globalised economy. This would also enable the railways to maintain its primacy over the roadways in the coming years when heavy haul road transport will be carrying 60 tonnes plus loads with the ongoing improvement in the national highways, upcoming express ways and golden quadrilateral national high ways linking the four metros and major ports.
Official sources stated further that final location survey and alignment have almost been completed to start the construction works from early 2009. As for the Western corridor, bridges would be done between Surat and Mumbai, for which tenders have been floated, to start the works. For the Eastern corridors, the works would start between Aligarh-Kanpur, to begin with, for which tenders floated have bagged participation of 48 international companies. Once the tenders are awarded, the works would commence.
Although DFCs have been in the air ever since the process of globalisation of Indian economy began in July 1991, it was first incorporated by Lalu Prasad,s immediate predecessor Nitish Kumar in the Tenth Plan document formally. But it remained a mere paper work. Taking a pick from Nitish Kumar's leaf, Lalu jumped the gun making DFCs a flagship project of the UPA Government, for which initial necessary formalities have since been completed. Once the works start, it will take more than the targeted time frame of five years, given the usual delay in the form of time over-run and cost push in such infrastructural works of high magnitude!#
Work on dedicated freight corridors yet to commence!
M.Y.Siddiqui - 21-07-2009 08:45 GMT-0000
The work on the much hyped Indian Railways Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs), announced in the Railway Budget 2007-08 speech by the Union Minister of Railways Lalu Prasad, with a big fanfare as a pet infrastructural project to recapture primacy of Railways in the bulk freight movement, which was to begin during that year, the first year of the 11th Five Year Plan, is yet to commence. Even during the third quarter of the current fiscal year 2008-09, the second year of the 11th Plan, the construction work has not started so far. As already announced in the 2007-08 Railway Budget speech, the DFCs were to be completed within five years during the 11th Plan itself.