Indian Railway
Indian Railways receives 120 applications from 15 players to run pvt trains on key routes
New Delhi/IBNS: The Indian Railways has received 120 applications from 15 players, including L&T, GMR and Wellspun, in response to its Request for Quotation inviting private players to operate trains on key routes.
The railway ministry on July 1 had initiated the process of allowing private players on 109 key routes, thus opening up one of the most prominent enterprises of the government, in a bid to bridge the gap induced by the demands of a fast growing economy.
According to an HT report the applicants for the clusters include Arvind Aviation, BHEL, Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarrriles, S.A, Cube Highways and Infrastructure III Pvt Ltd, Gateway Rail Freight Limited, GMR Highways Limited, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited, IRB Infrastructure Developers Limited.
The others are L&T Infrastructure Development Projects Limited, Malempati Power Private Limited, Megha Engineering and Infrastructures Limited, PNC Infratech Ltd, RK Associates and Hoteliers Pvt Ltd, Sainath Sales and Services Pvt Ltd and Welspun Enterprises Limited, it added.
Altogether, 14 Indian firms and one Spanish firm are competing to run the private trains in India, the HT report stated.
“It may be noted that the Ministry of Railways (MOR) had invited Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for private participation in operation of passenger train services over 12 Clusters comprising 140 Origin Destination pair of routes through introduction of 151 modern Trains to increase high quality trains operated on the network,” the ministry said.
The report said this includes 12 applications each for the Delhi 2 and Mumbai 2 clusters, 11 for the Bengaluru cluster, 10 applications each for the Prayagraj, Secunderabad, Jaipur and Delhi 1 cluster and nine each for Chandigarh, Howrah, Patna, Mumbai 1 and Chennai.
The Railways had invited applications to introduce 151 modern trains to increase the density of high quality trains on these clusters.
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