Question : Privatisation of Railway Routes

(a) whether the privatization of various routes in Indian Railways is likely to improve the railway services and if so, the details thereof;

(b) the details of routes and trains which are likely to be operated by private players;

(c) whether the fares of train tickets are likely to increase as a result of this privatization move and if so, the details thereof;

(d) whether subsidies will be retained to citizens from various categories in Railways who will be travelling in these routes; and

(e) if not, the reasons therefor?

MINISTER OF RAILWAYS AND COMMERCE & INDUSTRY
(SHRI PIYUSH GOYAL)

(a) and (b) Ministry of Railways (MoR) has invited applications for investment and induction of modern rakes over select routes through Public Private Partnership (PPP) to provide world class services to the passengers. As part of this initiative, MOR have issued 12 Requests for Qualification (RFQs) on 1st July, 2020 for operation of passenger trains over approximately 109 origin-destination pairs (divided into 12 clusters) through PPP on Design, Build, Finance and Operate (“DBFO”) basis. The routes are spread across the entire Indian Railway network and the list is available in the public domain namely, http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/IndicativeRoutesfor12clusters.pdf. The responsibility of train operations and safety certification rests with Indian Railways.

(c) to (e) Under the project “Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for operation of passenger services”, the operators will be selected through a transparent bidding process. The selected operators will be permitted to charge market determined fares in lieu of the haulage charges and revenue share paid to the Indian Railways. The existing passenger services will not be affected under this project. The fare of the existing services will continue to be fixed by Indian Railways.
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