By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI/BHUBANESWAR: After detailed exercise and multiple rounds of discussion with the industry players, the bids for PPP in Passenger Train Operations project are opened on 23 July 2021. This is an entirely new attempt to bring world class trains through Public Private Participation (PPP) in India.
Ministry of Railways has received bids from both private and public sectors to operate 29 pairs of trains with around 40 modern rakes entailing an investment of around Rs 7200 crores. The Ministry of Railways will expeditiously complete the evaluation and decide the bids.
Agreement was signed between RailTel’s subsidiary RailTel Enterprises Ltd and Indian Railways on dated 24th March, 2017 for providing Video Surveillance System at 983 Railway Stations.
The project cost is ₹ 500 crore and ₹ 295 crore have been allocated for the same under Nirbhaya Fund till 2021-22
As on date, 309 Railway Stations have been provided with Video Surveillance System and remaining 674 Railway Stations have been targeted for completion by October, 2022.
There is no proposal to privatise the Indian Railways. It is estimated that Railway Infrastructure would need an investment of Rs. 50 lakh crores between 2018-2030. To bridge the gap in the Capital funding, Public-Private partnership mode is envisaged to facilitate faster development of network, manufacturing of rolling stocks and delivery of passenger and freight services.
There are also a proposal to use Public Private Partnership mode for inducting modern rakes to run passenger trains on select routes with an objective to provide improved service delivery to passengers. However, the responsibility of train operations and safety certification rests with Indian Railways in all such cases.
Towards this objective, Ministry of Railways (MoR) has invited bids for induction of approximately 150 pairs of passenger train services to be operated over select routes through Public Private Partnership (PPP). These train services to be operated in PPP mode shall be additional trains, aimed at increasing the availability of train services to the public. In view of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bid opening due date for RFP (Requests for Proposal) stage has been rescheduled to 23.07.2021. All the existing employees are to be retained in the above proposal.
