Modi, Abe lay foundation for India’s first bullet train
NEWDELHI/AHMEDABAD:Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe on Thursday laid the foundation of India’s first high speed rail project, linking the country’s commercial capital Mumbai to Ahmedabad, the main city in Modi’s home state Gujarat.
The ₹1,10,000-crore project — popularly called the bullet train — aims to modernise the country’s crumbling vast colonial-era rail networks. Modi said the project will “bring speed with safety” to rail operations besides contributing to economic development in terms of generating jobs. The high speed rail projects constitute a part of the “New India” plan, Modi said, adding that the NDA government’s approach would be to bring “more productivity through high speed connectivity”.
Addressing a huge gathering at the railways’ athletics ground in Sabarmati, Modi said the stretch between the two cities will turn into a single economic corridor. Later, in a joint address to the media with Abe after the 12th annual bilateral summit, Modi said, “This is not just the start of a high speed rail. Keeping in mind our needs in the future, I believe this new railway philosophy will be the lifeline to a new India.”
The two leaders also launched, through video conferencing, construction work for a high speed training institute at Vadodara to train technicians in operating the high-speed track technology.
An agreement for the highspeed project, a joint venture between Indian Railways and Japan’s Shinkansen Technology, was first signed in May 2013 by then PM Manmohan Singh, during his visit to Tokyo. The project, with a maximum design speed of 350km per hour, is scheduled for completion in 2023. “But we will make efforts to complete it a year in advance so as to coincide its launch with 75 years of India’s Independence,” Modi said.