Dedicated Freight Corridor

The Indian Railways’ quadrilateral linking the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Howrah, commonly known as the Golden Quadrilateral; and its two diagonals (Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Howrah), adding up to a total route length of 10,122 km comprising of 16% of the route carried more than 52% of the passenger traffic and 58% of revenue earning freight traffic of IR. The existing trunk routes of HowrahDelhi on the Eastern Corridor and Mumbai-Delhi on the Western Corridor were highly saturated, line capacity utilization varying from 115% to 150%. Railways lost the share in freight traffic from 83% in 1950-51 to 35% in 2011-12. Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) project was conceived in 2005 and two DFCs, namely Eastern DFC (EDFC) and Western DFC (WDFC) were approved by Cabinet in 2008.

Need for the Reform
In initial years, project was impaired due to delays in land acquisition and financing arrangements, which led to delays in finalisation of contracts. From 2007 to 2014, only 88% of the total land was acquired. Remaining land patches were held up due to land disputes, arbitration & court cases. As a result, even after 9 years after announcement, not even single patch was completed. Project was going at very slow pace and Railways continued to lose more and more traffic to road. This has indirect effect of increasing logistics cost, thereby making our trade less competitive. With running of coaching and freight trains on same tracks, freight traffic was not witnessing major increase.

Approach and Present Impact
After 2014, the project was put on fast track mode with allocation of sufficient funds and periodic review and monitoring in Pragati by the Hon’ble PM. Regular review meetings by the Minister of Railways ensured that many long pending issues were resolved.

Award of contracts & CAPEX also witnessed quantum jump. Contracts worth Rs 42,989 Crs have been awarded since 2014 till now, a massive increase of over 237% as compared to the previous period from 2007-14, and all the contracts are now in place with progress in full swing.

Progress of work started picking up after 2014. Capital expenditure (excluding land) jumped 997% to Rs 45,616 Crs in 2014-21 as compared to Rs 4,158 Crs from 2007-14 period. Capital expenditure (excluding land) in the first 10 months is Rs.8,000 Crs and is likely to reach Rs.13,500 Crs. in this financial year.

Works on DFC were severely affected during April-May due to COVID-19 related lockdown. Under the guidance of the Hon’ble Minister of Railways, DFC requested various State Governments for relaxation of certain lockdown norms and resumed the construction activities by following all COVID related protocols. Work was proactively started with 20,000 workers at more than 500 sites in 57 districts.

The Hon’ble Minister of Railways started weekly review of the DFC project from August 2020 and since then 22 review meetings have been held till date including with concerned Chief Secretaries and Contracting agencies/Project Management consultants. This has given a big boost to the progress of the project and resolution of issues with State Governments.

Expediting the progress
Regular monitoring of the project has resulted in expeditious decision making and resolution of long pending issues which significantly improved the progress of works. The executing agencies were also sensitized and target for commissioning of the project by June’22 and they have mobilised additional resources accordingly.

Development of dashboard
For real time & effective monitoring of the project progress DFCCIL has developed a user friendly dashboard to monitor the physical and financial progress of the various sections of the project in real time basis. Various critical issues pending with different State Governments/Local Bodies & Zonal Railways are also highlighted on it. This has also brought in transparency in the process of reporting of the information.