NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways’ revenue from commercialization of unutilized lands has shot up by a staggering 289 per cent in the past three years.
While the national transporter earned Rs 22.29 crore from commercial lands in 2016-2017, the revenue shot up to Rs 86.9 crore in 2018-19.
The railways have over 50,000 hectares of unutilized lands across the country.
“If the railway land is left unutilized for 10 years, we decided to convert it to commercial establishments to generate revenue and as you can see the collection from these lands has gone up by over 200 per cent,” a ministry official said.
The railways, through the Railway Land Development Authority (RLDA), develops unutilized lands across the various zones of the country. In terms of the area of unutilized lands, the Northern Railway heads the charts with around 11,000 hectares of unutilized lands within its jurisdiction.
It is followed by the Western Railway which over 6000 hectares of unutilized land and North Eastern Railway which has around 5500 hectares of non-utilised land.
With regard to revenue generation, topping the list is the North Western Railway with Rs 16.7 crore. It is followed by Southern Railway and North Central Railway with earnings of Rs 15.7 crore and Rs 12.48 crore respectively.
