In a first, Indian Railways has identified 100 routes to run 150 modern trains based on a revenue-sharing model with private partners, said Railway Board chairman Vinod Kumar Yadav. The bids for the same will be invited in the next two weeks, he added.
Of the 100 routes, 35 have been identified to connect New Delhi, 26 to Mumbai, 12 to Kolkata, 11 to Chennai and eight to Bengaluru. The move will end Indian Railways' monopoly in running the train business in the country. While privatisation of certain routes were in the works for a while now, more clarity emerged after the finance ministry’s Public Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) gave an in-principal approval to the proposal on December 19. Reportedly, major long-distance routes identified for bidding include Mumbai-Kolkata, Mumbai-Chennai, Mumbai-Guwahati, New Delhi-Mumbai, Thiruvananthapuram-Guwahati, New Delhi-Kolkata, New Delhi-Bengaluru, New Delhi-Chennai, Kolkata-Chennai and Chennai-Jodhpur.
According to The Economic Times, other prominent routes include Mumbai-Varanasi, Mumbai-Pune, Mumbai-Lucknow, Mumbai-Nagpur, Nagpur-Pune, Secunderabad-Visakhapatnam, Patna-Bengaluru, Pune-Patna, Chennai-Coimbatore, Chennai-Secunderabad, Surat-Varanasi and Bhubaneswar-Kolkata. Some routes connecting New Delhi to Patna, Allahabad, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Katra, Gorakhpur, Chhapra and Bhagalpur have also been reportedly selected. Most of the private routes are metro-centric routes, connecting to at least one metro city.
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The Railway Board had, in October, formed an empowered group of secretaries, headed by NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, to chalk out the modalities of the bidding process and take other decisions to fast-track the awarding of bids to private players.
According to the plan, infrastructure, maintenance, operations, and safety will be handled by Indian Railways, wihle private train operators can take trains on lease and provide better on-board experience and services to the passengers, in terms of food, comfort, and entertainment.
