Railways earmarks Rs5,000 cr to revamp stations before 2019 polls
11 May 2018
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Indian Railways will spend Rs5,000 crore on revamping 68 stations, as it is keen to start its ambitious station redevelopment project before 2019 Lok Sabha elections. To this end, it will also rework the conditions for private partnership to make the proposal more inviting for companies, The Economic Times reported today.
With the general elections coming up next year, the railways station development project would be a major milestone for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, considering the number of people who use the railways. The ET report said that the ministry of railways has already made budgetary allocations to the zonal railways and has asked for completion of the project by the end of this financial year. One of the promises of the NDA government before coming to power was to develop 400 stations, and the scheme was launched in February 2017, but it garnered weak response from corporate houses.
In its first phase, the project picked up 23 stations, including Indore, Pune, Thane, Borivali, Bandra Terminus and Jammu Tawi, but it has not seen much progress in the past year.
Suresh Prabhu, railway minister at that time, expected investment of Rs1 lakh crore from private players. The government invited bids and business ideas to provide basic amenities at the stations, in return allowing commercial use of railways land.
“The most valuable real estate anywhere in the country is where there is a railway station. Stations have a huge commercial value by virtue of the fact that so many people use it. The challenge is how to monetise this asset and generate money for railways and provide amenities for passengers,” Prabhu had told ET.
The deal, however, did not appeal to corporate houses because of the restrictions the railways had imposed; also the concession period of 45 years did not seem viable to them.
The ministry has finally resorted to investing in the project on its own, along with some tweaks to the original terms of their proposal to try and rope in some corporate houses.
As part of the plan, several existing structures would be revamped, with air conditioned waiting halls, food courts, new foot bridges, more facilities for passengers and upgrading the look of station entrances.
A top official of the ministry told ET that most of the money would be spent on installing elevators, flooring the platforms, and refurbishing the walls.
All the zonal railways assigned to the task have already hired architects and the work is reported to have started. However, the deadline of the end of the year might be stretching it as there is a lot of work to be done.
Two stations — Habibganj in Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh and Gandhinagar near Surat in Gujarat — would see transformational changes that would match state-of-the-art faculties seen at the top airports in India.
