NEW DELHI: The Union Cabinet at its meeting on Wednesday gave its nod to four railway projects worth Rs 18,658 crore covering multi-tracking 680 route Kms in three Naxal affected states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Odisha, Union Minister for Information & Broadcasting (I&B) Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Friday.
The Minister further informed that at the meeting of the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi it was also decided to approve second phase of the Vibrant Villages Programme worth Rs 6,839 crore covering the states having land borders with neighbouring countries including Pakistan, Nepal, China, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Bhutan.
Vaishnaw, while briefing media about the decisions with regard to Railways, said, the four projects covering 15 districts in three states - Maharashtra, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh - will increase the existing network of the transport monolith by about 1,247 km.
He said, these projects include the Sambalpur-Jarapda 3rd and 4th Lines and the Jharsuguda-Sason 3rd and 4th Lines in Odisha, the Kharsia-Naya Raipur-Parmalkasa 5th and 6th Lines in Chhattisgarh, and the Gondia-Balharshah doubling of rail tracks in Maharashtra.
The Minister said the augmented line capacity will improve mobility, providing enhanced efficiency and service reliability for the Indian Railways. “These multi-tracking proposals will ease operations and reduce congestion, providing the much-required infrastructural development on the busiest sections across the Indian Railway networks,” he said.
With these projects, 19 new stations will be constructed, enhancing connectivity to two Aspirational Districts (Gadchiroli in Maharashtra and Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh). The multi-tracking project will enhance connectivity to approximately 3,350 villages and about 47.25 lakh people, Vaishnaw said, adding that these would further result in additional freight traffic of magnitude 88.77 MTPA (million tonnes per annum).
The Railways, one of the most environment-friendly and energy-efficient mode of transportation, with these projects will help both in achieving climate goals and minimising the logistics cost of the country by reduce oil import (95 crore litres) and lower CO2 emissions (477 crore Kg), which is equivalent to the planting of 19 crore trees, the Minister said.
Meanwhile, as part of the Vibrant Villages Programme 2.0, the government aims to further achieve its vision of safe and secure land borders. “The programme would help in the comprehensive development of the villages located in the blocks abutting international land borders (ILBs), other than the northern border (with China) already covered under VVP-I,” the Minister said.
“With a total outlay of Rs 6,839 crore, the programme shall be implemented in select strategic villages in the States/UTs of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, J&K (UT), Ladakh (UT), Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal till the financial year 2028-29,” Vaishnaw said, adding that the interventions would be border-specific, state and village specific, based on Village Action Plans (VAP) prepared in a collaborative approach.
“The programme shall provide funds for infrastructure development within the village or a cluster of villages, value chain development (through cooperatives, SHGs, etc), border specific outreach activity, education infrastructure like SMART classes, development of tourism circuits and works/projects to create diverse & sustainable livelihood opportunities in the border areas,” the MHA, the nodal agency to implement the programme, said in a statement.