By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JAN 09, 2025: SERVING faster, safer & world class travel experience at nominal cost to billions of Indians is not an easy task. But Indian Railways is doing it in a mission mode by transforming itself to be a future ready organization catering to geographically, culturally, socially as well as economically diverse India. Keeping pace with the budgetary allocation, Railways has spent 76 percent of its budgetary outlay with in first nine months & 4 days of the current fiscal year. According to a latest expenditure report of Indian Railways till January 5, 2025, heavy investment is made in capacity augmentation, a reality aiming to make rail travel a world class experience in India.

The fruits for consistent Capital Expenditure (Capex) for the last one decade are visible in the form of 136 Vande Bharat trains, about 97 percent electrification of broad gauge, laying of new lines, gauge conversion, doubling of track, traffic facilities work, investment in PSUs & metropolitan transport. This Capital expenditure has led to faster, safer & world class travel experience at nominal cost to billions of Indians. With Vande Bharat sleeper trains at speed testing & safety certification stage, Rail commuters in India are all set to experience world class travel very soon for "long distance" travel. This will revolutionize the overall travel experience. This transformation of Indian Railways would not have been possible without the visionary foresight of Viksit Bharat & its prompt execution by spending in the modernization projects in a mission mode by Indian Railways.

Despite challenges like India being the most populous nation with its vast geographical, cultural & linguistic diversity, Indian Railways is implementing a vision of transformative governance to build a new, modern & connected India. It has been spearheading efforts to build an all-inclusive India by investing in infrastructure, technology, and sustainable practices. This way, Indian Railways is ensuring that the seeds of progress sown today bear best fruits for our future generations. Given the complexity of India, this is not an easy task for an organization to cater to the present load as well as to invest heavily in building its future. But with 1198 crore of Capital Expenditure spending in the first four days of this calendar year, the overall capital expenditure of Indian Railways stands at 76 percent with nearly three months to go.

The Total Capex for railways in Budget Estimate 2024-25 is Rs. 2,65,200 cr with Gross Budgetary Support of Rs. 2,52,200 crores. Out of it, Rs.192446 crores have already been spent. For rolling stock, the budgetary provision was for Rs. 50,903 crores. Out of it, Rs. 40, 367 crores were spent by 5th January, which is 79? of the budget, allotted for rolling stock. In Safety related works, out of budgetary allocation of Rs.34,412 crore, the amount spent is Rs. 28,281 crore, which is 82 percent of the allocated amount. The government has prioritized transforming Indian Railways into a world class entity, which ferries on an average "2.3 crore Indians" daily from one part of the country to the other part at an affordable cost. Charting out well on this path of development, India Railways is committing taxpayer's money in capital expenditure to create state of the art infrastructure for generations to come, thus contributing in the direction of "Future ready" Indian Railways as we all progress towards Viksit Bharat.