DFC, bullet train on track despite lockdown: Railways

NEW DELHI: The Railways' two big ticket projects — the Dedicated Freight Corridor and the bullet train project — aimed at a modal shift in rail operations in the country will not be delayed despite the Coronavirus crisis, Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav said Wednesday.

His statement comes at a time when most infrastructure projects in the country are facing delays due to the lockdown, coupled with the paucity of labour and the economic slump.

The Rs 81,000 crore Dedicated Freight Corridor, which is the Railways' single-largest developmental project currently underway, consists of the Eastern DFC, a 1,839-km freight line from Ludhiana in

Punjab to Dankuni near Kolkata, West Bengal, and the 1483-km WDFC or western corridor connecting India's capital Delhi and its economic hub Mumbai.

According to latest data provided by DFCCIL on Wednesday, the agency has completed 56 per cent of its contractual work on WDFC and 60 per cent on EDFC.

The agency said 99 percent of the required land has been acquired.

The completion of the project, scheduled for December 2021, is set to decongest the Railway network by moving around 70 percent of goods trains to these corridors.

"It was a very good decision on part of the DFCCIL (Dedicated Freight Corridor Cor

poration of India Limited) to keep their labourers in camps around the worksite and providing them with basic amenities a bit, and since there is still time till December 2021 (the deadline), I expect we will not be delayed, Yadav said in an interview.

According to the DFCCIL, they had around 40,000 workers at their worksites in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra which primarily was reduced to around 15,000 workers during the lockdown

leading to a slowdown in its work.

Its managing director wrote to the states, requesting them to ensure that workers are allowed to move from the camps to the worksites, even arranging e passes for them. The agency also hired locals to supplement the workers available with them.

Now, DFCCIL is also facilitating the movement of its

labourers back to the worksite on trains and buses and in the last month has brought around 7,000 highly trained workmen back from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The latest tally, officials say is around 22,000 workers at the DFC units.

The completion of the DFC and the resultant decongestion of the railway network is also essential for the beginning of the 151 private train services in April 2023.

"By the time the private trains begin operations, we would have completed all our infrastructure work. We are doing a lot of infrastructure work of doubling and tripling which would address the congestion issues that these trains might face, he said when asked about the congestion on the trunk routes.