Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA) has signed a MoU with National Building Construction Corporation for redevelopment of 10 railway stations across the country at par with international standards. The Railways has embarked on this ambitious project to redevelop 403 stations on PPP mode with the participation of private players, public sector and with the assistance of foreign funding.

The identified stations to be taken up initially by NBCC for redevelopment are Tirupati, Sarai Rohilla (Delhi), Nellore, Puducherry, Madgao, Lucknow, Gomtinagar, Kota, Thane (New) and Ernakulam. NBCC has been given 10 stations in first phase for redevelopment and more stations would be given to them in subsequent phases.

RLDA and NBCC shall form a Special Purpose Vehicle in the form of a joint venture company to execute the station redevelopment project. The JV shall redevelop the stations on a self-financing model. These stations would be developed as smart railway stations.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the doubling of 247.5 Km long Railway line from Daund (Solapur Division of CR)  to Manmad (Bhusawal Division of CR) to ease movement of passengers and goods across Pune, Ahmednagar and Nashik in Maharashtra.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs gave the approval at an estimated cost of Rs 2,081.27 crore and expected completion cost of Rs 2330.51 crore.

The 247.5 km long railway line is expected to be completed in five years.

“Doubling of the line will greatly ease the ever increasing passenger and freight traffic on Daund-Manmad route, thereby increasing the revenue of Railways,” the rail ministry said in a statement.

“Besides passengers, industries in and around Daund- Manmad route will have additional transport capacity to meet their requirements. The districts of Pune, Ahmednagar and Nashik in Maharashtra will be benefited by this project,” it said.

At present the Railways is working on the Mumbai-Chennai route by doubling the Bhigwan-Mohol and Hotgi-Gulbarga sections.

Work on a new line on the Lonand-Phaltan-Baramati route in Maharashtra is also in progress.

“Once these works are completed, there will be tremendous increase in traffic over the Daund-Manmad section and existing single line will not be in a position to deal with the increased traffic,” the ministry statement said, emphasising the need for doubling.

State-run SAILs Bhilai plant has received an order for 12 lakh tonne (LT) rails from the Indian Railways for the current fiscal, Steel Secretary Aruna Sharma said yesterday.

She was replying to a question asked by an industry member at KATM conference on raw materials for steel and power here.

“Railways is on an expansion mode creating new railway lines. Is is not that the railways is not procuring new rails. Railways has already placed a confirmed rail order of 12 lakh tonnes with Bhilai in this financial year,” Sharma said.

Bhilai Steel Plant is the flagship unit of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). It produces high strength rails, heavy structurals, wide and heavy steel plates of different grades, merchant products, wire rods etc.

The unit became the first integrated steel plant in the country to surpass the 5 MT mark in crude production in the year 2005-06.

The plant has unique distinction of producing cleanest rail in the world.

Aiming at increasing competition and reducing expenditure on procurement, the Indian Railways will adopt a reverse bidding process for high-value items like rolling stock parts, track equipment and cement among other purchases.

Reverse auction is an online bidding process that allows vendors to submit multiple bids on time scale and then compete online with each other by offering lowest acceptable bids.

Currently several ministries, including the power ministry, and public sector undertakings are using the reverse auction process to procure supplies at competitive prices. Though the railways has introduced the e-procurement system, which has helped to bring down corruption, officials say that procurement rates are still too high.

The railways purchases about Rs 60,000-crore worth of materials, including track items and items for the production and maintenance of locomotives and coaches, in a year.

“We aim to reduce the procurement expenditure substantially through reverse bidding method,” said a senior railway ministry official.

The railways, therefore, is in the process of developing a software for the reverse bidding purpose. “First we will try the system as a pilot project involving limited items.Then it will extended to all type of high value purchases.”

The Indian Railways will also be launching a system of digitisation of its entire supply chain across all zones, which also aims at improving the ease of doing business and transparency.

Digital contract, as it will be called, will be a seamlessly integrated digital supply chain. It envisages involving stakeholders including industries, financial institutions, internal customers of railways and inspecting agencies to create an efficient, responsive and transparent system.

“With 100% e-tenders and e-auctions already assimilated into the system, we are further planning to build on these initiatives to achieve seamless flow of material, finances and information,” the official said.

The system includes digitisation of processes like bill submission, inspection, dispatches, receipt, bill passing and bill payments, warranty monitoring and enabling use of analytics for increasing supply chain efficiencies in real time.

The railways have about 52,000 registered vendors for supplies and the vast supply chain also handles more than 2,664 registered bidders for the sale of scrap material.

Tenders and auction process are already on e-platform in railways.

A private company that won the contract to maintain crucial facilities for India’s longest railway tunnel deployed less than half the staff it was required to and lied to the government about it, the CBI alleged while opening an investigation.

The Central Bureau of Investigation filed an FIR against six people — four Railways officials and two from Sarvonik Sistem India Private Limited — for criminal conspiracy and cheating since the private firm billed the Railways for 87 employees while engaging only 35 people on an average.

The company has been responsible for the ventilation, electro-mechanical works and telecommunications inside the 11.2-kilometre long tunnel connecting Qazigund and Banihal in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pir Panjal range.

The contract was given to Sarvonik for Rs 5.34 crore in 2015. The following year, the contract was extended for 12 more months.

“As per the contract agreement, 87 employees were required on ground for round the clock operation and maintenance of Pir Panjal Railway tunnel,” according to the CBI FIR.

“The actual attendance register also shows that less number of employees (were) deployed on ground (and) as such huge loss was caused to the government exchequer.”

Further, according to the FIR, the contract provided for registration of 87 employees for provident fund (PF) but only 22 employees were registered for the PF.

Identity cards were issued to all 87 employees, but only 38 of them got I-cards for 2016-17.

“In this way, (the) accused persons entered into criminal conspiracy and cheated the railway department by abusing their official position by authenticating the fake employees and raised the inflated bills as per the contract agreement, thus caused a wrongful loss to the government of India,” the FIR concluded.

Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) has constructed the 11 km long Pir Panjal Railway tunnel, the longest transportation tunnel in India, which has been successfully commissioned by Indian Railways. IRCON is the executioner of the Project.

Newly appointed Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Saturday said that all the unmanned level crossings will be removed within a year.

“Initially, the Railways had a target of removing all unmanned crossings in three years. But I told them, why not do it within a year. Around 5,000 unmanned level crossings which account for nearly 30-35 per cent of total rail accidents, need to be removed by the railways in the next one year,” Goyal said while addressing a program in IIM-Calcutta.

He also emphasised on leveraging technology to improve Indian Railways’ efficiency and claimed to have presented the idea of floating global tenders for laying new railway tracks.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan have become members of key cabinet committees reconstituted after the September 3 reshuffle.

After her elevation as defence minister, Ms Sitharaman has become a member of the cabinet committee on security headed by Prime Minister Modi. Finance Minister Arun Jaitely was till recently holding the additional charge of defence after Manohar Parrikar quit the Union Cabinet in March.

SS Ahluwalia, who was divested of his charge as minister of state for parliamentary affairs, is also no longer a member of the cabinet panel on parliamentary affairs which recommends dates of parliament sessions.

Vijay Goel, who has been made the minister of state for parliamentary affairs, is part of the reconstituted parliamentary affairs ministry as a special invitee along with Arjun Ram Meghwal, another MoS in the parliamentary affairs committee.

Ms Sitharaman and Mr Goyal have also become part of the cabinet committee on political affairs and cabinet committee on economic affairs. Mr Pradhan has also become a member of the cabinet committee on economic affairs which meets almost every week just before the meeting of the full cabinet usually on Wednesdays.

Uma Bharti, who was divested of her water resources ministry portfolio, is not a member of any of the cabinet committees.

State-run carrier Indian Railways carried 215.86 million mt coal over April-August, down marginally by 0.3% from the same period a year ago, according to the latest data from the Directorate of Statistics and Economics.

Of the total quantity transported by Indian Railways in the first five months of the current fiscal year 2017-18, 179.89 million mt was domestic coal, down 0.6% year on year, while 35.97 million mt consisted of imported coal, up almost 1% from the year-ago period.

Domestic coal shipments transported to thermal power houses fell 32% to 89.56 million mt during April-August while imported coal shipments stood at 6.95 million mt, up 69% year on year, the data showed.

Domestic coal supply to steel mills during the period under review was at 6.71 million mt, down 6% from a year ago, while imported coal volumes grew 23% to 15.82 million mt.

The data showed domestic coal deliveries to other users jumping 107% to 83.50 million mt while imported coal deliveries fell 29% year on year to 13.20 million mt.

Coal contributes to around 50% share in the overall freight traffic of Indian Railways.

On a monthly basis, the railways carried 42.07 million mt of coal during August, up 6% from the same month a year ago.

If a fast-moving train with Integral Coach Factory (ICF)-designed coaches derails, the deaths and injuries will be 25 times higher as compared to a train composed of LHB coaches.

This statistic, brought out in a recent audit report of Indian Railways, is a key reason why the railways will stop manufacturing the ICF coaches and switch over completely to the German-technology Linke Hoffman Busche (LHB) coaches.

Extracts from the report show that for 2014, 2016, 17 trains with ICF coaches which met with accidents, resulted in 431 deaths and injury of 866 people. In comparison, the three derailments that LHB coaches met with, killed only four people and injured eight. “This proves the superiority of LHB coaches over ICF coaches’. The latter is not safe for operational speeds of 100120 kmph with trailing loads of 2024 coaches,” the report noted.

On August 19, 13 ICF coaches of the Utkal Express derailed in Uttar Pradesh, killing more than 20.On August 29, nine LHB coaches of the Nagpur-Mumbai Duronto Express derailed, but there were no casualties.

“This is attributed to the anti-climbing/anti-piercing  features of LHB coaches due to vertically interlocked centre buffer couplers that prevent the coaches from capsizing in a derailment. None of the LHB coaches of Dibrugarh Rajdhani Express turned turtle despite a derailment in 2014,” the audit report noted.

ICF, Chennai, will completely switch-over to LHB coaches in a few weeks time, an official said.

Indian Railways, the largest civil establishment of the Government is providing due opportunities to MSME suppliers, today it procure 25% of its total purchases from micro and small enterprises.

However, down below, some of its offices are still scary of allowing supplies by MSMEs and putting hindrances in upscaling status of the MSME suppliers.

One glaring example is reintroduction of category gates for suppliers by the RDSO, which put additional procedural burden on MSMEs, even after categorisation of vendors were annulled by the Railway Board.

Railways register new suppliers after detail inspection of  manufacturing and testing facilities and all other documents.

Even after that MSMEs are registered as ‘Developmental Vendors’ with limitation on the extent of supplies they can make and other additional checks and balances.

After repeated successful supplies, these contractors have to apply again for upgradation to regular vendors and repeat the entire registration process.

With the focus of the present Government on ease of doing business, the Railway Board, the apex body of the Railways, done away with the two track registration system by an order dated 18th November, 2016.

But the bureaucracy below thought otherwise.

By an order hardly a month after, RDSO Lucknow, the authority to approve the vendors, negates the Railway Board order and reintroduced categorisation of vendors.

The MSMEs are really upset.

Commenting on the situation, Mr. Naveen Jain of Muzaffarnagar and regular supplier to Railways mentioned that this a big harassment to MSME suppliers.

He also mentioned that for new products / items Railways can term  contracts as developmental but for routine items what purpose the categorisation serve, besides creating additional hurdles for MSMEs to register as regular vendors.

The moot question here is who rules the Railways, the Board or the subordinate RDSO.

Otherwise, how an order of the board, abolishing ‘developmental’ and ‘normal’ categorisation of the vendors, were overruled by RDSO.

According to some of the observers, this is the real challenge for  ‘Make in India’ today, where the decisions of the Government to promote manufacturing are reversed by the bureaucracy.