'Necessary to implement what has been promised in Railway Budget'

Speaking exclusively to ETV Bharat over the Union Budget 2021, former Rolling Stock Member of Railway Board, Rajesh Agrawal asserted that it is necessary to implement what has been promised while mentioning that the Railways was badly hit after it's budget was merged with the Union Budget.

New Delhi: As the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2021-22, on Monday, allocating a record sum of Rs 1,10,055 crore for the development of Indian Railways, an ex-official and expert in the matter asserted that it is necessary to implement what has been promised while mentioning that Railways has got severely affected since it's budget got merged with the Union Budget.

While speaking exclusively to ETV Bharat over the Union Budget 2021, former Rolling Stock Member of Railway Board, Rajesh Agrawal said, "Mostly I would like to see the implementation what has been promised in the Budget. Since it merged with Union Budget, the Railways has been converted into a loss-making organization. This reversal we hope takes place in 2021," she said.

He asserted, "The outlay for Railways and the gross budgetary support is below expectations. Perhaps it is less than last year. Secondly, we have a huge commitment to Railways from both the Prime Minister and the Railway Minister. We need to now see the result of what has been promised when the rail budget was being merged with the Union Budget- to have timetabled freight trains, to increase the average speed, to increase mobility. Now we need to know whether we will see in the next 1-2 years?" he said.

The Finance Minister in her Budget Speech mentioned that Indian Railways has prepared a National Rail Plan for India 2030.

She said that the plan is to create a "future-ready railways" system by 2030, bringing down the logistic cost for the industry is at the core of a strategy to enable Make in India.

The ex-official of Railways opined that there needs to be introspection and planning of some methods that need to be followed in the upcoming years to achieve the targets set by Railways.

"I was heading the rolling stock. We have made many such improvements trying to get all this in position in 2019. We got semi high-speed trains, improvement in speed of LHB rakes and improvement in passenger services. Those were the huge fillip given in 2019, both in freight and passenger. I think we need to pick up from there with some strategy to see whether we are able to get our commitments which we made in 2016-17," Agrawal stated.

While the central government has not made any such new announcements for Railways in the Union Budget, Sitharaman has set a timeline for DFC saying that it is being expected that the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) and Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor will be commissioned by June 2022.

The additional initiatives that have been taken up in the Union Budget include the Somnagar-Gomoh Section, which is of 263.7 km at stretch, of Eastern DFC, will be taken up in Public Private Partnership model in the year 2021-22. After that, the Gomoh-Dankuni section of 274.3 km will also be taken up.

Speaking over the matter, Rajesh Agrawal said, "There are some things which we can dry upon. They have given a time frame for the implementation of Dedicated Freight Corridor. There we need to have a strategic committee in position to check whether we actually able to implement what we expect to implement."

"They have mentioned about the production in mobility. That could be done with the initiatives that were being taken in 2019, which has seen a halt due to COVID-19 pandemic. So we need to pick up from where we were heading in 2019," he further added.

Mentioning about the other sectors which were kept in focus for the Railway Budget, the ex-Railway official said, "This Budget has given a huge allocation for the Research and Development expenditure in the public sector. Railways has a huge R&D organization. We can be at the forefront of technology in the rolling stock sector with the help of this allocation. Monetization of Railway land is something specific which we need to see in action."