The Union budget has allocated a record Rs1.48 trillion for Indian Railways to raise its carrying capacity and improve the train travel experience.
Of this, Rs1.46 trillion is capital expenditure, while Rs2,028 crore is to reimburse operating losses on strategic lines and reimburse IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) for the operational cost of e-ticketing. In the last budget, finance minister Arun Jaitley had waived service charges on railway e-tickets to encourage cashless transactions. The charges waived were Rs40 for AC class and Rs20 for sleeper class.
In his budget speech on Thursday, the finance minister said a large part of the capital expenditure is for capacity creation, and mentioned different initiatives being taken. These include track doubling, and third and fourth line works of 18,000 km; 5,000 km of gauge conversion; redeveloping 600 railway stations, equipping them with Wi-Fi and CCTV cameras; introduction of modern train-sets; and escalators for stations with footfalls over 25,000.
The budget also had good news for suburban railways. Jaitley said Mumbai’s suburban rail system is being expanded at cost of Rs10,000 crore, and an additional suburban network worth Rs40,000 crore was also being planned, including elevated corridors. Similarly, 160 km of suburban rail network worth Rs17,000 crore has been planned for Bengaluru.
Railways will step up the use of technologies like ‘fog safe’ and train protection and warning system, and eliminate 4,267 unmanned level crossings in the next two years.
While the finance minister pointed to the Railways’ efforts on track renewal and capacity creation, interestingly, the allocation for replacing old used assets (also known as depreciation reserve funds) saw a drastic reduction of over 85% from Rs5,400 crore in 2017-18 to Rs500 crore 2018-19 as per the budget documents.
The budget was also silent on accounting reforms in Railways, non-formation of railway regulatory authority, reduction in passenger earnings and new trains.
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