TARIFF ROADBLOCK AT DFC

The Dedicated Freight Corridor project -scheduled for completion in June 2024 - needs to meet the stated objective of lowering logistics costs for users. As DFCCIL taps new business and private logistics players line up, it needs a policy for use of the corridor.

- ASHUTOSH KUMAR

DURING A REVIEW MEETING in August 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi quizzed the Ministry of Railways on the delays in the implementation of the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) project — an exclusive corridor for freight movement at a higher speed and capacity. Deferment of the completion deadline of the eastern (Ludhiana-Dankuni) and western (Dadri-Mumbai) DFCs totalling 3,381 km from December 2021 to June 2022 had led to the meeting. Taking a dim view of the railway ministry’s explanation citing delays in land acquisition by state governments, Modi directed the office of the railway minister to hold a weekly review of the project and update the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).

With the project on the PMO’s radar, the then railway minister Piyush Goyal shot off letters to governments of Bihar, Jharkhand, U.P., Punjab and Gujarat, where land acquisition issues were dogging the project.

Corridors Take Shape

Three years since Modi’s intervention and follow-ups by the then railway minister Piyush Goyal and current minister Ashwini Vaishnaw with state governments and other departments, both corridors are finally taking shape. Vaishnaw was inducted into the Union council of minister and given the charge of the railway ministry in July 2021.