City buses, railway lines to get a boost

Cabinet okays e-bus, multi-tracking, digital projects worth ₹1.18 tn

- Rhik Kundu, Subhash Narayan & Ravi Dutta Mishra

 The Union cabinet on Wednesday cleared a raft of programmes spanning mobility to digital, totalling ₹1.18 trillion, about eight months ahead of general elections.

Railways bagged the biggest chunk of about ₹32,500 crore, which will go into seven projects, including laying multiple tracks in busy routes to ease operations and reduce congestion. All projects will be fully funded by the Centre.

“The projects covering 35 districts in nine states, i.e. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal, will increase the existing network of Indian Railways by 2,339 kilometres and will provide employment of 70.6 million man-days to the people of the states," the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) said in a statement.

“These are essential routes for transportation of varied baskets of commodities such as foodgrains, fertilizers, coal, cement, fly ash, iron and finished steel, clinkers, crude oil, limestone, edible oil, etc. The capacity-augmentation work will result in additional freight traffic of magnitude 200mtpa (million tonnes per annum). Railways being an environment friendly and energy-efficient mode of transportation will help both in achieving climate goals and reducing logistics cost of the country," it added.