The corporate sector is interested in plans to run private railway trains

New delhi date. Thursday, October 22, 2020

Companies have shown great interest in operating private trains by Indian Railways. Given this, there is a strong possibility that more and more companies will enter the sector in the near future.

The Railway Board recently said that so far the Railways has received about 150 applications from 17 companies. These include Railway Catering Tourism Corporation, Larsen Toubro, and GMR among others. According to these petitions, about 15 different companies in the country have shown interest in operating private trains.

It may be mentioned here that the Ministry of Railways last Dt. On July 1, the formal process of approving private trains on Route 108 began. These requests have been made for different clusters. Out of these 12 companies, 12 are Indian companies while one Spanish company has shown interest in operating private trains in India.

Earlier, a total of nine companies, including Bombardier Transportation India, Siemens Ltd and Alstom Transport India Ltd, had expressed interest in the pre-auction meeting held last August.

The Railways had on July 1 called for RFQ to run trains under PPP standard on Route 150 in 14 clusters. All the clusters together will bring a total of 150 state-of-the-art trains to private companies. According to the Railway Ministry, allowing private trains to operate is likely to lead to an investment of Rs 20,000 crore in the railways.

The 12 private clusters planned by the railways include Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh, Howrah, Patna, Prayagraj, Jaipur, Chennai and Bengaluru.