Indian Railways takes various key infrastructure initiatives to achieve objectives of AtmaNirbhar Bharat

March 19, 2021 Rail News

Indian Railways is committed to achieve the objectives of AatmaNirbhar Bharat. A number of infrastructure development initiatives are envisaged in the National Rail Plan (NRP) being prepared by Indian Railways. 

  • The objective of the Plan is to create infrastructure capacity ahead of demand, which in turn would also cater to future growth in demand right up to 2050 and also increase the modal share of Railways to 45% in freight traffic and to continue to sustain it. 
  • The draft plan has been put up in the public domain (The Indian Railways website) and is also being circulated amongst stakeholders for comments/remarks.

The key infrastructure initiatives taken by Indian Railways to achieve objectives of AatmaNirbhar Bharat are:-

  • Complete the identified 58 super critical, 68 critical and 20 coal projects for capacity augmentation.
  • Complete all executable gauge conversion projects.
  • As part of the National Rail Plan, Vision 2024 has been launched for accelerated implementation of certain critical projects by 2024 such as 100% electrification, up gradation of speed to 160 kmph on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes, up gradation of speed to 130kmph on all other Golden Quadrilateral-Golden Diagonal (GQ/GD) routes and elimination of all Level Crossings on all GQ/GD route.
  • Proliferation of indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) Systems in signaling for enhancing safety of running trains.
  • All coaches manufactured in Production Units are completely indigenous except for the forged wheel and axle. Efforts are being made to indigenize them also.
  • 97% of Electric loco equipment are indigenously sourced.
  • Most of the track machines (around 87%) are manufactured in India.
  • 3 new Dedicated Freight Corridors identified.  
  • Strive for Net zero carbon emission by 2030.

This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Commerce & Industry and Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

Source: PIB-Press Release | Image Credit (representational): MoR