Interim Budget 2024 | Fast & safe: 40k bogies to be of Vande Bharat grade

The Vande Bharat bogie standards reduce the overall weight of bogies, allowing quicker acceleration and deceleration compared to normal bogies. The bogies are manufactured by Integral Coach Factory, Chennai, owned and operated by the Indian Railways. Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told ANI in an interview Thursday that the upgradation of normal bogies to Vande Bharat standards will cost around Rs 15,000 crore and take 5 years to implement.

Meanwhile, the three major economic railway corridor programmes are aimed at improving logistics efficiency and reducing costs and focusing on energy, mineral, cement, port connectivity, and high traffic density corridors. “The resultant decongestion of high-traffic corridors will also help in improving operations of passenger trains, resulting in safety and higher travel speed. Together with dedicated freight corridors, these three economic corridor programmes will accelerate GDP growth and reduce logistic costs,” she said. Vaishnaw said 40,000 km of new tracks will be laid for these corridors over the next 6-8 years and the entire programme will cost an estimated Rs 11,000 crore.

For financial year 2024-25, the estimated budget allocated to Railways is slightly higher at Rs 2.65 lakh crore compared to revised estimate of Rs 2.6 lakh crore for the ongoing FY24. Of the total budget allocation for FY25, Rs 13,000 crore will be financed through borrowings, a sharp reduction of 35 per cent from the revised estimate of Rs 20,000 crore for the ongoing financial year. Furthermore, the estimated capital outlay on Railways’ commercial lines in FY25 has been increased to Rs 2.52 lakh crore compared to the revised estimate of Rs 2.4 lakh crore for FY24.

As per the Interim Budget, Rs 25.5 lakh crore has been allocated to the Railways Ministry compared to revised estimate of Rs 24.3 lakh crore for the current FY. The revised estimate for FY24 is slightly higher than the Rs 24.1 lakh crore announced in the budget last year. The estimated capital outlay on Railways’ strategic lines in FY25 has also increased to Rs 107 crore from the revised estimate of Rs 101 crore for FY24, significantly higher than the initial estimate of Rs 75 crore.

The NHAI has been allocated Rs 1.68 lakh crore, up from the revised estimate of Rs 1.67 lakh crore for the ongoing financial year while Rs 2.5 lakh crore has been allocated to the Ministry of Road Transport and Roadways as capital outlay on roads and bridges, marginally higher than the revised estimate of Rs 2.4 lakh crore for FY24.