{"id":664,"date":"2019-09-18T22:06:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-18T16:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=664"},"modified":"2019-09-18T22:07:13","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T16:37:13","slug":"pm-modi-puts-brakes-on-goyals-100-electrification-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/?p=664","title":{"rendered":"PM Modi puts brakes on Goyal’s 100% electrification plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pursued aggressively by Piyush Goyal since his arrival in Rail Bhawan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Premature idling of in-service rolling-stock stable was not a good idea -PM<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Prime Minister is learned to have nudged the policy correction while reviewing the work of the Ministry of Railways at the PMO in the presence of the full Railway Board led by Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal<\/strong><\/p>\n

New Delhi:\u00a0<\/strong>A high-level meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi<\/strong>\u00a0is learned to have suggested to the Indian Railways to not rush through unilaterally with its grand drive of 100 percent electrification of the country\u2019s railway network. The Prime Minister is learned to have nudged the policy correction while reviewing the work of the Ministry of Railways at the PMO last Monday, 26th March 2018 in the presence of the full Railway Board led by Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal.<\/p>\n

PM Modi is learned to have raised questions on the 100 percent electrification policy – pursued aggressively by MR Goyal since his arrival in Rail Bhawan in September last year – wondering what the need\/justification for it was, especially because the massive working infrastructure is already in place for diesel, the other mode of traction.<\/p>\n

The PM was of the view that premature idling of in-service rolling-stock assets from the diesel stable was not a good idea, sources said. The Indian Railways have around 5,800 working diesel locomotives.<\/p>\n

\u201cElectrification is a long-term process. Its timeframe has to depend on the Budget,\u201d said a source who is aware of the deliberations. \u201cThese things do not happen immediately. The diesel stock that we have has a certain life, and it (the changeover) will take time,\u201d the source said.
\nOne major takeaway for the Railway Board from the meeting was that the \u201c100 percent electrification\u201d policy was to be put on hold, without missing the yearly physical targets for electrification as and when decided every year on a need basis, sources said.<\/p>\n

The message that Railways got from the meeting was that the PM was more interested in the national transporter achieving its yearly budgetary expenditure targets towards electrification and other capital spends.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe electrification plan should be annual target-based. Budget allocation-based annual commitments for electrification should be taken up,\u201d another top source said, summarising the upshot of the review meeting.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Railways have already announced plans to electrify their entire network by 2021-22. \u201cMinistry of Railways has decided to electrify balance 38,000 Broad Gauge (BG) Route Kilometer (RKM) for achieving 100% electrification,\u201d Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain said in a reply to an unstarred question in Lok Sabha, setting 2021-22 as the timeframe to achieve it.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lok Sabha was informed of ambitious annual targets of upwards of 4,000 km to meet this deadline. In the 2017-18 financial year, however, only around 2,500 km was achieved until the end of February, far short of the 4,000-km route electrification target.<\/p>\n

There have been calls from within the government for a \u201cstrategic rethink\u201d, for both financial and operational reasons, of the 100 percent electrification policy. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley did not use the phrase \u201c100 percent electrification\u201d in the Budget and instead referred to \u201coptimal electrification\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are moving fast towards optimal electrification of the railway network. 4,000 kilometers are targeted for commissioning during 2017-18,\u201d Jaitley said in his Budget speech.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Railways have thus far deployed a staggered approach towards the electrification of tracks. Over the years, they have electrified high-traffic routes based on the projected rate of return on the heavy capital investment that is involved. They have not identified for electrification routes with sub-optimal traffic – and the projected return on investment is not favorable for a majority of the 38,000 route kilometers that remain to be electrified.<\/p>\n

Sources said the decision to electrify 100 percent of the network was taken without adequate multi-disciplinary high-level consultations last year. The push for electrification triggered alarm bells in the US multinational General Electric last year after\u00a0Piyush Goyal<\/strong>\u00a0instructed the Railway Board to explore the option of exiting the diesel locomotive project in Marhowra (Bihar). GE had signed an agreement with the government in 2015 to build the modern diesel locomotive factory in a joint venture with the Railways to supply 1,000 high horsepower diesel engines exclusively to the Indian Railways over 10 years. The Railways subsequently backed off to allay GE\u2019s apprehensions.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:\u00a0<\/strong>The Indian Express<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pursued aggressively by Piyush Goyal since his arrival in Rail Bhawan Premature idling of in-service…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":665,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"koo_publish_custom_meta":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/PM-MODI-N-GOYAL.jpe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":667,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions\/667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/railsamachar.com\/english\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}