Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation Ltd. (IRSDC) in association with PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry organised a webinar on August 18, 2020. The webinar was focussed on the ‘current and upcoming Business Opportunities in the field of station re/development and facility management’ that the developers and fund houses can explore. MD &CEO, IRSDC, Shri S.K. Lohia made a detailed presentation on the theme of the webinar in presence of key officials from PHD Commerce and Industry, Mr. Veenu Jain, Chairman and Mr. Ranjan Dhingra and Mr. Ravi Gupta, Co-Chairman, Embassy of Czech Republic in addition to prominent developers and fund houses.
During the webinar pioneering steps of IRSDC were shared, like Habibganj Railway Station will be the first station under PPP mode, EPC tender of Gandhinagar Railway Station was accepted in 2017, KSR Bengaluru was taken up by IRSDC for Facility Management in 2019 and the PPPAC approval for 4 stations (Nagpur, Gwalior, Amritsar and Sabarmati) in 2020.1
MD & CEO, IRSDC highlighted-
- IRSDC is the Planning & Approval Body for all Railway Station Redevelopment projects:
- In consultation with local bodies
- Generally following National TOD policy
- No Change in Land Use required PAN India
- IRSDC has started functioning as a deemed planning authority for railway projects.
- MoEF has clarified Station development projects with commercial development are exempted from prior Environment clearance subject to certain terms & conditions.
In addition to this the participants were briefed about the current activities of IRSDC and the opportunities for private sector in three domains broadly i.e. Integrated Facility Management, Station Redevelopment and Land Monetisation.
The current activities are:
- Projects under Execution- 2 (Habibganj and Gandhinagar)
- EPC Contracts awarded for Station Development- 3 (Anand Vihar, Bijwasan, Chandigarh)
- Commercial Development Tenders- 3 (Anand Vihar, Bijwasan, Chandigarh)
- RFQs invited- 4 (Amritsar, Nagpur, Gwalior and Sabarmati)
- Stations for Integrated Facility Management (FM)- 5 running, 90 more planned
- CPSEs engaged to act as PMC for 45 Stations
MD & CEO, IRSDC during the webinar stated that how IRSDC is at the core of Indian Railway’s mission of transforming country’s railway stations into world-class 24×7 hubs and supporting ‘innovations’. These redeveloped hubs will be called ‘Railopolis’ as here people can live, work, play and ride.
It will attract huge investment and business opportunities. With application of Form Based codes developed by IRSDC, the availability of public area in ‘Railopolis’ shall increase thus making such redeveloped railway stations as true city centres. Shri Lohia also highlighted the Facility Management efforts undertaken by IRSDC.
Source: IRSDC-Press Note
