Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal Union Railways Minister said at an ASSOCHAM event held in New Delhi said that the Indian Railways has a pivotal role to help India register an economic growth rate of over nine per cent.
Mr Bansal while inaugurating an international conference titled Rail@2020: Public Private Partnership, organized by ASSOCHAM said that "We must think out of the box to achieve the ambitious nine per cent growth target and Indian Railways can play a very important role in this behalf by contributing about two percentage points of country's economic growth."
He said that we need dedicated freight corridors to achieve this target and in this behalf the government has planned 2 primary corridors eastern and western corridor: one from Ludhiana to Kolkata and the other from Delhi to Mumbai.
He added that "When these corridors will become operational, the goods trains can move without any interruption whatsoever."
He said that the Union Railway Ministry has sought private sector participation for re-development of five railway stations one each in Bhopal, Chandigarh and Pune and two in the capital city of Delhi.
He added that "We are working on an ambitious and significant project of re-developing the railway stations and have about 5 railway stations to begin with for which we would immediately invite the private sector participation."
Talking about the use of land owned by Indian Railways, Mr Bansal said that "The land on the sides of tracks has to be retained for possible expansions, building more parallel rail tracks and the land adjacent to railway stations has to be used to re-develop the entire 7,000 stations gradually."
On the issue of removal of slums on the sideways of railway tracks, he said that Ministry of Railways can work together with the Ministry of Urban Housing and Poverty Alleviation. We can work out a framework by which railways can leave some land so that flats can be built for slum dwellers thereby improving their living standards.
Mr Bansal while releasing an ASSOCHAM-Yes Bank study titled Re-imagining Railways said that "There is a scope for the private sector to infuse about INR 0.1 million crore during next 5 years to improve the rail network across India and for this we have different projects and about 105 models including the first mile and last mile connectivity."
He said that "The private sector can also contribute in making engines, running high speed trains, dedicated freight corridor and others and for which there will be different railway lines for transportation. Containerization is another sector which needs to be taken forward with private sector participation as it can help revolutionize transportation in India."
He further added that "Core functions would remain with railways and we are just inviting private sector to expand rail network and going by the size of India there is tremendous scope for expansion."
Source - http://indiaeducationdiary.in
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