To realise Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of the Railways being a backbone and lifeline for India, the Railways under the pragmatic leadership of Minister Suresh Prabhu has embarked on an ambitious mission to redevelop over 400 railway stations which will have amenities on a par with those at modern airports. Bureaucracy Today brings to its readers and the stakeholders an indepth report of the project which will bring a qualitative difference in the lives of Indian citizens.
Unclean toilets, choked basins, litters on railway platforms and along the tracks, inadequate place to sit, the shortage of water supply at passenger service locations like waiting rooms, retiring rooms and platform lavatories and passengers waiting for trains as they lie on their bedsheets or rugs spread on platforms amidst litters. This is a common sight as one enters a railway station in India.
But not anymore. This sore sight is soon going to be a thing of the past with the Indian Railways beginning a project to redevelop over 400 stations based on station revenue.
“The project has already been given Cabinet nod. The Indian Railways will redevelop 400+ stations and this development will touch around 16 million passenger footfalls per day,” Rajiv Chaudhry, Advisor (Station Development), Railway Board, in an exclusive interview tells Bureaucracy Today.
The Indian Railways Station Development Corporation (IRSDC) has been entrusted with the execution of the ambitious project. The IRSDC is a Joint Venture company of Ircon International Limited (IRCON), a railway public sector undertaking, and the Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA), a statutory organisation under the Ministry of Railways.
“The basic idea is that we will commercially develop our surplus railway land near the stations and the air space over the station if required. From the surplus proceeds of such commercial development we will redevelop the railways stations and also earn a profit on bargain,” says Chaudhry, an officer of the 1981 batch of the Indian Railway Service of Engineers.
This story is from the February 01 2017 edition of Bureaucracy Today.
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This story is from the February 01 2017 edition of Bureaucracy Today.
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