PM Modi, Shinzo Abe to flag off bullet train project September

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe will jointly preside over the ground-breaking ceremony of the ambitious Rs 1 lakh crore worth Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project in Gandhinagar in September this year. It will officially mark the beginning of the construction work for the Prime Minister’s dream project.

According to reliable sources, Mr Abe is likely to visit India tentatively between September 14 and September 17 this year. Incidentally both the leaders’ birthday falls within four days of each other.

The visit, sources added, has been planned in such a way that it will coincide with Mr Modi’s birthday which falls on September 17 and there is a possibility that the ground breaking ceremony may take place on that date. Incidentally Mr Abe’s birthday also falls just four days later on September 21.

Sources privy to the development said that though the final dates of Mr Abe’s visit are yet to be finalised, it is likely to be a three-day visit and may take place between September 14 to 17.

Estimated to cost about Rs 1 lakh crore, 81 per cent of the funding for the project is to be facilitated through a loan from Japan. The project cost includes possible cost escalation, interest during construction and import duties. Maharashtra and Gujarat will also share 25 per cent cost each for the project.

A high speed training centre is also to come up at Gandhinagar, which will provide training to railway officials regarding operations and management of bullet trains. Currently some batches of railway ministry officials are visiting Japan for receiving training on the technical aspects of operating bullet trains, sources said.

Highly-placed sources informed this newspaper that later this month, a delegation from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is the main funding agency for the bullet train project, will hold negotiations with top railway ministry and Niti Aayog officials to finalise the loan agreement. The loan pact will also cover the costs for the proposed high speed training centre.

Currently geo-technical survey of the project is going on, which is to be followed by the final location survey to mark the alignment and exact spots for the pillars on which trains will run at higher speed to reduce the travelling time between Mumbai and Ahmedabad drastically.

It takes about seven hours to travel between the two cities and the bullet train aims to reduce it to about two hours. Construction of the corridor is expected to start in 2018 and is estimated to be completed by 2022.