NEW DELHI: To improve safety, the Railways claims to have spent an amount of over Rs 1.22 lakh crore in carrying out massive replacement and upgradation of railway assets including old railway tracks and bridges in the country over the last 5 years.
The upgradation project also included locomotives, wagons and signaling equipments to ensure safe and swift services. According to the Railways, this is being done in addition to regular inspection of assets to ensure their fitness for services and obsolete assets are being replaced with new technology on age-cum-condition basis.
In the last five years, the Railways has met an actual expenditure of Rs 1,22,865 crore on replacement and upgradation of assets over the last 5 years. “The total expenditure of Rs 1,22,865 crore is funded to the extent of Rs 78.501 crore from Gross Budgetary Support and balance from Internal Generation and Extra Budget Resources on Ministry of Railways,” said an official, adding that the outlay for budget estimate 2023-24 is Rs 29,325 crore.
The Railways claimed that Rs 20,407 crore was spent on the replacement and upgradation of railway assets in 2018-19, Rs 18,557 in 2019-20, Rs 28,529 in 2020-21, Rs 28,517 in 2021-22 and Rs 26,855 in 2022-23. To ensure safety in operating of trains at high speed, the Railways spends capital expenditure on replacement of tracks under the Plan Head 31-Track Renewals while expenditure on replacement of coaching stock is met under Plan Head 21-Rolling Stock.
Sharing details of expenditures, the Railways said Rs 9,690 crore was spent on track renewals in 2018-19, Rs 9,391 in 2019-20, Rs 13,523 crore in 2020-21, Rs 16,558 crore in 2021-22 and Rs 16,325 crore in 2022-23. It had spent Rs 1,815 crore on rolling stock programme in 2018-19, Rs 1,178 crore in 2019-20, Rs 3,466 crore in 2020-21, Rs 2,870 crore in 2021-22 and Rs 2,034 crore in 2022-23.
