The Ministry of Railways has been allocated ₹2.55 lakh crore for 2024-­25. 
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

With a thrust on investment in infrastructure, the Union Ministry of Railways has been allocated ₹2.55 lakh crore for the financial year 2024-25, up by 5.8% from last year’s allocation of ₹2.41 lakh crore.

Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that up to 82% of last year’s allocation had been spent by the end of January.

According to the Interim Budget 2024 document, the Ministry of Railways could only utilise ₹1.6 lakh crore, based on the actual numbers released for 2022-23.

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Mr. Vaishnaw said that the revised operating ratio for 2023-24 was 98.7%, which is the ratio of working expenses to traffic earnings. “All expenditure for pension is being borne from railway revenue,” he added.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her Budget speech, said that the Centre will implement three major economic railway corridor programmes — energy, mineral and cement corridor, also being referred to as Energy Economic Corridor; port connectivity corridor a.k.a Rail Sagar; and high traffic density corridors a.k.a Amrit Chaturbhuj.

A total of 434 projects with an investment of ₹11 lakh crore will be rolled out under these programmes, said Mr. Vaishnaw. “An integrated approach to railway planning has been undertaken by consulting 18 Ministries and this plan has been in the works for the past two years. We are in the process of preparing detailed project reports, freezing final alignments and interacting with State governments for the smooth working of the development along these corridors,” Mr. Vaishnaw said in response to a question by The Hindu.

The corridors have been planned along the lines of PM Gati Shakti framework by tracking the origin and destination nodes of railways across India. “This allows us to understand where we need to add a railway section, which areas require doubling or multi-tracking of routes, where we need rail-over-rail flyovers, or where we need to deploy new lines. For instance, how do we better manage passenger traffic flow from Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha towards Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru or how do we manage large transport origin from Nasik,” the Minister explained.

Over the next five years, the Railways Ministry is planning to overhaul 40,000 train bogies to provide a better passenger experience similar to that of the Vande Bharat trains. The entire exercise is expected to cost ₹15,200 crore.

“Good quality toilets, better safety standards like installing semi-permanent coupling, features like presence of charging points, automatic water measurement systems for filling up of tanks, installation of GPS and CCTV cameras will be added features in upgraded coaches,” Mr. Vaishnaw said.

Notably, budget allocation for investment in public sector units and joint ventures has decreased from ₹34,353 crore in 2023-24 to ₹31,107 crore in 2024-25. Experts say this is because the Railways is interested in opening up the market to private players.

The bullet train project by National High Speed Rail Corridor Limited has attracted the maximum chunk of allocation, up from ₹19,592 crore to ₹25,000 crore. The project when implemented will reduce travel time between Mumbai and Ahmedabad from five-six hours to three hours.

A view of the production of Vande Bharat Coaches at Integral Coach Factory in Chennai. File
| Photo Credit: R. Ragu

With an outlay of ₹2.40 lakh crore for the financial year 2023-24 compared to ₹1.40 lakh crore in the FY22-23, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the outlay for the railways is nine times the amount provided in 2013-2014.

The Ministry of Railways was able to spend ₹1.35 lakh crore in FY2021-22, budget documents note. 

Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister of Railways said that because of lesser allocation to the railways in the past, the true potential of the sector had not been achieved. “The current outlay will be beneficial for 800 crore passengers who annually travel by railways,” Mr. Vaishnaw said. 

The higher outlay, he said, will be used to ramp up production of Vande Bharat trains, which will now be manufactured from four sites, as opposed to the existing one site in Chennai. “Sonipat in Haryana, Rae Bareilly in U.P., and Latur in Maharashtra will be added as manufacturing sites,” he said.  

Mr. Vaishnaw added, “Eight Vande Bharat trains have now covered an equivalent of travelling 52 times along the perimeter of the earth. So we now know that the product is well tested and stabilised. It is now time to ramp up supply chain and production. Currently we manufacture one Vande Bharat train in seven days. We want to ramp this up to two to three trains every week.”

Mr. Vaishnaw pointed out that operating ratio has stabilised at 98.22% against 107.39% in 2021-22. Operating ratio is the amount of money the railways has to spend to earn ₹100. A lower operating ratio implies better financial health. “We hope to reduce this number further as the entire electrification process is complete — 85% of the railway network has been electrified,” he said. 

He also said that a train run fully on hydrogen will be ready by December 2023, and will be first run on the Kalka-Shimla heritage circuit. The Ministry of Railways is developing economic and social corridors through the railway network: “These corridors will target hilly areas, port areas, tribal areas through the Janjatiya Gaurav corridor,” he said. 

On the work for the bullet trains, the first of which will run between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, pegged to be commissioned not before 2026, Mr. Vaishnaw said that the previous Shiv Sena government had made it hard to obtain clearances for the project in Maharashtra. “Now the government has changed and clearances are easier to come by,” he added. 

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