Promising to transmogrify Indian Railways in the next five years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi while inaugurating ₹85,000 crore worth of railway projects from Ahmedabad on Tuesday said the Railways were heading towards 100 per cent electrification, installation of automatic signalling systems and construction solar-powered railway stations.
“Compared to the pre-2014 era, the average rail budget in the last 10 years has increased more than six times. Today I am giving a guarantee to the nation that in the next five years, Indian Railways will see such a transformation which no one would have imagined,” said PM Modi while inaugurating the Operation Control Centre of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor in Ahmedabad.
100% electrification of railway
“We are installing an automatic signalling system by removing unmanned railway crossings from the Indian railway network. We are also heading towards 100 per cent electrification of the railway network and we are also building railway stations that will run on solar power,” he added. The Prime minister said that the locomotives and train carriages made in India are being exported to countries like Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Senegal, Myanmar and Sudan.
Talking about the construction of Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), PM Modi said, “In the last 10 years, this freight corridor that will link the east and west coasts is nearly complete. Today 650 kilometers of the DFC has been dedicated to the nation. The speed of freight trains on this corridor has more than doubled. Big wagons that can carry more goods have also started plying on the corridor, he added.
He said next generation trains like Vande Bharat, Namo Bharat, Amrit Bharat, modernised railway stations, modern locomotives and coach factories are helping in changing the image of Indian Railways in the 21st century. On a day when 10 new Vande Bharat trains where flagged off in different parts of the country, PM Modi said Vande Bharat train service network are now touching 250 districts in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, among others.
Master plan
The Prime Minister said 350 Aastha Special Trains have already transported 4.5 lakh pilgrims to Ayodhya where the new Ram temple has been built.
At the same event PM Modi also laid the foundation Stone for a Petrochemicals complex of Petronet LNG at Dahej worth more than ₹20,000 crore and informed that it will help boost hydrogen production and demand for polypropylene in the country. Later in the day he also inaugurated Kochrab Ashram in Ahmedabad and launched the master plan of Gandhi Ashram Memorial.