Union Budget: Rs 10,440 crore allocated for railway infrastructure in Northeast

Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday said that the physical progress of all the ongoing projects in the northeastern region is advancing at a good pace.

 While virtually interacting with the media, the minister said that despite being located in geographically difficult terrain, project works are being carried out on a 24x7 basis for early completion.

He said that in Assam and other northeastern states, 1824 km of new tracks have been constructed since 2014, which is more than the entire rail network of Sri Lanka.

According to the Railways Minister, 478 new flyovers and underpasses have been constructed in the northeastern states since 2014.

A total of 1189 route kilometres have been identified for implementation of Kavach across the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) zone, the Minister added.

NFR General Manager Chetan Kumar Shrivastava, NFR General Manager (Construction) Arun Kumar Choudhary and senior railway officials of the NFR headquarters (Maligaon near Guwahati) were also present at the event.

The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR), operates in the northeastern states and in seven districts of West Bengal and five districts of north Bihar with more than 6400 Km of tracks in its jurisdiction.

Both the NFR General Managers while addressing the media informed that 92 stations across its zone would be transformed under the Amrit Bharat stations scheme. Electrification of all the tracks under the jurisdiction of NFR would be accomplished by December this year.

The Bhairabi-Sairang project in Mizoram is also likely to be completed by the month of July this year, the General Managers added.

According to the officials, the Gross Budget Allocation for Railway infrastructure projects in the northeast for the FY 2025-26 is Rs 10,440 crores. It is more than five times as compared to the average budget allocation of Rs 2,122 crores during 2009-14, they said.

This year's budget allocation shows unprecedented growth in several segments like new line and doubling projects, track renewal works, traffic facilities, road safety works, bridge works, signalling, workshop modernisation and customer amenities etc.