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Journalism of Courage
In a bid to commercially exploit surplus railway land and air space, Indian Railways has constituted the Rail Land Development Authority RLDA which, through Public-Private Participation PPP, will develop surplus land adjoining existing railway infrastructure.
Apart from generating additional resources for the development of railways, RLDA is expected to play a key role in developing metro stations into world class modern stations and extend passenger amenities through construction of food plazas, shopping malls and hotels on surplus vacant land available with the Railways.
Over 60 sites, mainly in metros and bigger cities have been identified over the past couple of years and will now be entrusted to RLDA for commercial exploitation. 8220;Sites located in bigger cities will be taken up first due to their market potential,8221; said a senior Rail Bhawan official. Other than the four metros, sites have been identified in Chandigarh, Nagpur, Gwalior, Kanpur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Bangalore, Vishakhapatnam, Ahmedabad and Coimbatore.
The idea behind RLDA is to have an authority which can exclusively pursue cases related to commercial development of railway land, as it requires interaction with local authorities and getting surveys carried out. 8220;The Railways realised that they were not able to make headway in this direction in the existing set-up,8221; said a senior Railway Board official.
Sources said that even though the organisation has 43,000 hectares of land available, all of it will not be up for commercial development in view of Railways8217; future requirements. While RLDA8217;s core activity will be commercial development of surplus land, the maintenance and protection of the land will be the responsibility of the respective Zonal Railways.
