During the Budget speech 2007-08, the finance minister had stated that the ministry of railways would conduct pre feasibility studies for construction of high-speed passenger corridors equipped with state of the art signalling and train control systems, for running high speed trains at the speed of 300 to 350 kms per hour.

It had been proposed that one each such high-speed passenger corridor would be set up in the northern, western, southern and eastern regions of the country.

Accordingly, Indian Railways approached a number of state governments to ascertain their their willingness to participate in pre-feasibility studies. The governments of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Haryana, Punjab, Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal agreed in principle to participate in any pre-feasibility studies required to be conducted.

The ministry of railways has also conducted financial and economic analysis for Mumbai- Ahmedabad and Delhi-Amritsar high-speed rail corridors.

Minister of state for railways, R Velu yesterday said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha that as this proposal was in its initial stages, it was not possible to predict the actual time required to implement this proposed.