Rs 6,642 crore for redevelopment of CSMT and NDRS: Report

NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Railways, Government of India, has decided to soon release renders for redevelopment of the New Delhi Railway Station (NDRS) in Delhi and the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) in Mumbai. As per a report by the Business Standard, the project will see an investment of over Rs 6,642 crore – Rs 5,000 crore for New Delhi and Rs 1,642 crore for CSMT.

“The proposals are under consideration of the Ministry of Finance’s Public-Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC) and tenders will be invited within 10 to 15 days. Finalisation of the tenders is targeting within two months’ time,” VK Yadav, Railway Board Chairman, said as per the report.

The redeveloped station will have airport like facilities and charges for passengers and visitors. According to the report, these will be revenue streams for the Ministry as both handle huge daily loads – close to 1,300 local and long-distance trains, along with over a million passengers at CSMT, and 200,000 passengers at New Delhi.

The Indian Railways (IR) has planned an ambitious Rs 13.68 trillion capital investment towards station redevelopment projects over a five-year period. This also includes the New Delhi and CSMT redevelopments and another Rs 1 trillion set aside for redevelopment of 400 railway stations, as per the report.

“The major projects lined up include the commissioning of the dedicated freight corridor by December 2021, upgrading of high-density networks (HDN) to 130 kilo meter per hour (kmph) by March 2023, doubling and electrification of all HDN and highly utilised networks (HUN) by March 2024 and further upgrading all HDN routes to 160 kmph capacity by March 2025,” Yadav added.