(a) the number of ongoing railway projects at present and their project-wise and zone-wise details thereof;
(b) the number of projects out of these lagging behind the schedule and their project-wise details particularly in Araria district of Bihar;
(c) the project-wise details of cost escalations, due to the pendency of above projects, deadlines and source of funding; and
(d) the details of the steps taken to complete above projects on time?
MINISTER OF RAILWAYS AND COMMERCE & INDUSTRY
(SHRI PIYUSH GOYAL)
(a): At present 498 Railway projects including 188 New Lines, 55 Gauge Conversion and 255 Doubling Projects are in different stages of execution/planning/sanction. The total length of these projects is 49,069 km costing `6.75 Lakh Crore. The project wise details of projects are made available in public domain on Indian Railways website i.e. www.indianrailways.gov.in >Ministry of Railways >Railway Board >About Indian Railways >Railway Board Directorates >Finance (Budget).
(b) to (d): The timely completion of any Railway project depends on various factors like quick land acquisition by State Government, forest clearance by officials of forest department, shifting of infringing utilities (both underground and over ground), statutory clearances from various authorities, geological and topographical conditions of area, law and order situation in the area of project site, number of working months in a year for particular project site due to climatic considerations, encountering unforeseen conditions like earthquake, flooding, excessive rains, strikes of labour, orders of Hon’ble Courts, situation and conditions of working agencies/contractors etc. All these factors vary from project to project and site to site and affect the completion time and cost of the project, which is finally worked out at the completion stage.
There are four Railway projects in the Araria district of Bihar. Out of these, complete land has not been received in two projects, namely Araria-Galgalia new line (110.75 km) and Araria-Supaul new line (92 km). However, work has been taken up in available land in Araria- Galgalia project & work on remaining two projects (Saharsa-Forbesganj Gauge Conversion & Jogbani-Biratnagar New Line) have been taken up.
In the overall interest of the nation and to ensure that projects are completed in time without cost overrun, lot of monitoring is done in Railways at various levels (field level, divisional level, zonal level and Board level) and regular meetings are held with the officials of State Government and concerned authorities to resolve the pending issues that are obstructing the progress of projects.
To ensure that projects are completed even before time, Railway has adopted the concept of incentives to the contractor in the form of bonus clause in contracts which will further enhance the pace of execution of projects.
For capacity enhancement projects, etc. institutional financing has been done by arranging loan of `1.5 lakh crore, which has increased Railways’ capacity for committed fund provision for essential projects.
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