Over 40 per cent or ₹1.08 lakh crore of the Budgetary allotment of ₹2,55,393 crore for FY25 will be used towards enhancing the safety of Railways, including installation of Kavach — the indigenously designed anti-collision system for trains, the Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.

According to him, approval for Kavach ‘4.0’ — the LTE enabled safety system — has been received last week; and this would help “speed up the roll out” in coming days.

So far, 1,465 route km (RKMs) of the over 68,000 RKMs of the Railways has Kavachg coverage. While this number is less than 3 per cent of the total Railway network coverage in India, sources said, these existing 1465 RKMs will also be upgraded with the new LTE-based safety systems.

“Of the ₹1.08 lakh crore, allocations will be towards installation of Kavach 4.0, maintenance of tracks and coaches, relaying of new tracks and safety feature enabled coaches, among others,” Vaishnaw said.

According to him, 4,275 kms of optical fibres have been laid down to sync systems under the new Kavach 4.0.

Budgetary Support

Incidentally, the Budget allocation — capital and revenue expenditure together — in FY25 stands at ₹2,55,393 crore, a 5 per cent rise over FY24. This includes the Budget support of ₹2,52,000 crore, same as announced in the Interim Budget earlier in February.

Budget Estimates (BE) last fiscal was ₹2,41,267.51 crore; and this includes a Budget support of ₹2,40,000 crore.

The actual spending was ₹2,43,271 crore (₹2,40,000 crore Budget support and ₹3,271.84 crore of Revenue Expenditure).

“This is the highest ever allocation towards the Railways under the Narendra Modi regime. In comparison, the previous regime under Congress-led UPA was allocating around ₹35,000 crore or so,” Vaishnaw said.

Total Allocations Down

Interestingly, if the Internal and Extra Budgetary Resources (IEBR) are considered, the Budget allocations for the Railways is down in FY25 by 10 per cent-odd year-on-year.

IEBR includes funds raised through various financing sources, including those through IRFC for capex deployment.

The BE for FY25, after considering an allocation of ₹252,000 crore and IEBR of ₹13,000 crore stands at Rs 265,000 crore. As against this, the BE for FY24 was ₹2,92,783 crore, which includes ₹2,40,000 crore of Budgetary support and IEBR of ₹52,783 crore.

The actuals for FY24 stood at ₹2,60,000 crore, which include ₹20,000 crore of IEBR and the remaining being its Capital Expenditure allocation.

The IEBR includes investment in public enterprises such as Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd, Bengaluru Suburban Transport Project, Kolkata Metro Rail Coproration, among others.

“Some of these allocations are project specific and accordingly there is a variance in spending.” an official explained.

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