240 projects worth Rs 47,000 cr pending

While the Railway Budget once again unveils grandiose network expansion plans, there are harsh realities facing the ministry. Information ob...

While the Railway Budget once again unveils grandiose network expansion plans, there are harsh realities facing the ministry. Information obtained by The Indian Express using the Right to Information (RTI) Act reveals that pending projects are worth an astounding Rs 47,000 crore (till March 2005).

The longest pendency is for a railway project for which budgetary allocation was first made in 1972. In its response, the Railway Board has admitted that the maximum number of pending projects were announced during the tenure of the UDF government in 1997-98 and that the main reason for the delayed commissioning of the projects is the ‘‘heavy shelf of projects requiring over Rs 47,000 crore whereas resources are limited.’’

A list of 240 pending projects shows that for as many as 33 railway projects (some announced a decade ago), the Centre has given ‘nil’ funds for commencing the railway line. In terms of allocation, the biggest pending projects are the following:

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• Rs 5,550 Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramula project, started in 1994, on which Rs 1,986 crore has been spent.

• Rs 3,125 crore Mumbai Urban Transport project, for which Rs 879 crore has been spent.

• Rs 2,624 crore Dum-Dum Tollyganj Design and construction of rapid transit system, started in 1972. Only Rs 139 crore has been spent.

• Rs 1,767 crore Bogibeel bridge with linking lines between Dibrugarh and North Bank, which has been slated for completion in 2009 ‘‘subject to availability of resources.’’

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• Rs 1,033 crore Koderma-Ranchi line, begun in 1988, on which Rs 254 crore has been spent.

• Rs 910 crore Daitari-Banspani railway project, commenced in 1992 on which Rs 531 crore has been spent.

Ritu Sarin

Ritu Sarin is Executive Editor (News and Investigations) at The Indian Express group. Her areas of specialisation include internal security, money laundering and corruption. Sarin is one of India’s most renowned reporters and has a career in journalism of over four decades. She is a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since 1999 and since early 2023, a member of its Board of Directors. She has also been a founder member of the ICIJ Network Committee (INC). She has, to begin with, alone, and later led teams which have worked on ICIJ’s Offshore Leaks, Swiss Leaks, the Pulitzer Prize winning Panama Papers, Paradise Papers, Implant Files, Fincen Files, Pandora Papers, the Uber Files and Deforestation Inc. She has conducted investigative journalism workshops and addressed investigative journalism conferences with a specialisation on collaborative journalism in several countries. ... Read More

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