New Delhi | The Indian Railways will spend a major chunk of its budgetary allocation on train safety-related activities and the installation of the automatic train-protection system known as "Kavach", Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Tuesday while commenting on the Union Budget 2024-25.
Talking to reporters, Vaishnaw said an amount of Rs 2,62,200 crore has been allocated for the railways -- a record allocation for capital investment.
"A big chunk of this allocation -- Rs 1,08,795 crore -- is meant for safety-related activities, such as replacement of old tracks with new ones, improvement in the signalling system and construction of flyovers and underpasses, and to install Kavach, among others," he said.
Vaishnaw added that of all these safety-related activities, the installation of Kavach is on top of the priority list for the railways.
According to the minister, an upgraded version of the automatic train-protection system -- Kavach 4.0 -- has recently got approval from the Research Designs and Standards Organisation and with this approval, its installation will start happening at a rapid pace.
Vaishnaw said optical fibre cable, one of the components of Kavach, has been laid over 4,275 km and other components, such as telecom towers, the track RFID device, station Kavach and loco Kavach, are also being installed at a rapid pace.
Drawing a comparison with the budgetary allocation for the railways during the UPA rule, he said, "Around 2014, the budgetary allocation for the railways was used to be only about Rs 35,000 crore. Today, it has reached a new level of Rs 2.62 lakh crore. This budget takes forward the hard work and focused approach of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's last 10 years of rule."
"Before 2014, in 60 years, only 20,000 km of rail route was electrified but in the last 10 years, 40,000 km of rail route has been electrified. Similarly, in 2014, 4 km per day new track construction used to happen on an average, but in the last financial year, the railways constructed tracks on an average for 14.5 km per day, which means in the entire financial year, it constructed 5,300 km new tracks," Vaishnaw said.
The railway minister said initiatives taken in the last 10 years, such as expansion in the railway infrastructure, removal of bottlenecks, a boost in the manufacturing of engines and coaches and introducing new technology, which were taken in the last 10 years, will continue.
"The railways caters to low and middle-income group passengers and keeping this in mind, it maintains the ratio of general and air-conditioned coaches, which is one-third air-conditioned coaches and two-thirds general coaches of the total number of coaches in a train set," he said.
Vaishnaw emphasised that due to an increase in the demand for general coaches, a decision has been taken in the ongoing financial year to manufacture 2,500 extra general coaches.
"In another decision, 10,000 more general coaches will be manufactured to cater to the rising demand. The budget covers both the decisions," he added.
"So far as employment is concerned, in 10 years of the UPA rule, 4.11 lakh jobs were offered in the railways, whereas in 10 years of the Modi regime, five lakh jobs were offered, which is 20 per cent more than the UPA rule," Vaishnaw said.
