NEW DELHI (Metro Rail News): The Indian Railways is on a mission to revolutionize transport infrastructure and the Launch of Vande Bharat is one of the most significant steps towards achieving the same. Currently, Indian Railways operates 10 pairs of Vande Bharat Express trains. The production plan for Vande Bharat Rakes has been announced, with a target of 102 rakes in total. This includes 35 rakes to be produced in 2022-23 and 67 in 2023-24, to be manufactured in Indian Railways production units. 75 rakes are planned as Chair Car version and the remaining as Sleeper version.
Additionally, Indian Railways has floated tenders to select technology partners for manufacturing 400 Vande Bharat trains (Sleeper version) of three different technologies within its production units with its manpower. The proposed budget for this is Rs 19479 crore in the Revised Estimate of Financial Year 2022-2023, and an additional 8000 Vande Bharat Coaches have also been proposed under Budget 2023-24.
Indian Railways has introduced “Kavach” across its network, and it has been implemented on 1455 route km on South Central Railway. Contracts have been awarded for Kavach work on approximately 3000 route kms of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah sections, and work is in progress. Furthermore, a new Gati Shakti Multi-Modal Cargo Terminal (GCT) policy has been introduced to boost investment from the industry in developing additional terminals for handling rail cargo.
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The aim is to commission 100 Gati Shakti Cargo Terminals (GCTs) in three financial years, i.e., 2022-23, 2023-24, and 2024-25, out of which 30 GCTs have already been commissioned. 145 requests have been submitted for establishing Cargo Terminals under the GCT policy, and 103 in-principle approvals have been issued.
