PMO worried over delay in railway freight corridor

Despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi having taken a keen interest in fast tracking of the ambitious but much delayed Dedicated Rail Freight Corridor project, the railway ministry is yet to start the bidding process for initiating construction work on the 538-km-long Sonnagar-Dankuni section of the project’s eastern corridor, which incidentally is to be completed by December 2016. This particular stretch is to be implemented under the public-private partnership (PPP) mode, for which bidding would have to be done.

The Rs 82,000 crore project, which was initially conceived in 2006 and according to original timelines, was to be completed by 2011, has been on the radar of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) ever since the NDA Government came to power two years back.

This can be gauged from the fact that the project has been on many occasions part of the agenda of the Prime Minister’s monthly Pragati meeting, which he personally chairs to take stock of delayed infrastructure projects.

It was envisioned with the aim of decongesting the rail traffic by creating exclusive corridors for freight trains. Under the project, two such freight train corridors are to be created.

While the eastern corridor from Ludhiana to Dankuni (in West Bengal) will be 1,839 km long, the western corridor will be 1,499 km long, starting from Rewari to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT, Mumbai).

The 538-km-long Sonnagar-Dankuni stretch is the longest of all the stretches in the eastern corridor.

According to highly placed sources, in one of the recent meetings, when Mr Modi sought an update on the project’s eastern corridor’s progress, the railway ministry is learnt to have informed him that they are on the verge of completing the land acquisition process for the Sonnagar-Dankuni section of the project.

However, sources informed that while the land acquisition process for the aforementioned section has been on for some time, the railway ministry is yet to prepare the concession agreement document which is the basic pre-requisite for inviting bids under the PPP mode, for offering the construction work to prospective bidders.

The Sonnagar-Dankuni stretch scheduled to be completed by December 2016, however with no work having started on it, it seems highly unlikely that the deadline would be met. Also if this particular stretch gets delayed, then it would have an impact on the entire dedicated rail freight corridor project’s deadline, which is scheduled to be completed by December 2019.

The World Bank is the main funding agency for the eastern freight corridor, while for the western freight corridor, it is Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Even the CAG, in its report last year, had pulled up the Railway Ministry for the delay in the project, which was originally approved in February 2006 and was planned for completion within five years at the then estimated initial cost of Rs 28,181 crore by March 2011.

The CAG had said in its report that the delay in completion of project was mainly due to lack of proper planning and implementation. As a result, there was time overrun of three years and cost escalation of Rs 7,992 crore in construction cost and Rs 4,442 crore in land cost till March 2014 and the long term requirements of efficient and economical movement of freight traffic were yet to be achieved.

The auditor had asked the ministry to prepare a realistic and objective cost assessment for the project and take measures to complete it in a time-bound manner.