Presently, 255 Doubling projects of length 20,500 Km costing ₹2.32 lakh crore are in different stages of planning/sanction/execution, out of which 2,784 Km length has been commissioned and an expenditure of ₹48,342 crore has been incurred till March 2019. Total outlay of ₹17,602 crore has been provided for the projects in financial year 2019-20.
Details of doubling projects in progress and new works including expenditure and outlay are made available in public domain on Indian Railways website i.e. www.indianrailways.gov.in >Ministry of Railways >Railway Board >About Indian Railways >Railway Board Directorates >Finance (Budget).
The timely completion of any Railway project depends on various factors like quick land acquisition by State Government, forest clearance by officials of forest department, shifting of infringing utilities (both underground and over ground), statutory clearances from various authorities, geological and topographical conditions of area, law and order situation in the area of project site, number of working months in a year for particular project site due to climatic considerations, encountering unforeseen conditions like earthquake, flooding, excessive rains, strikes of labour, orders of Hon’ble Courts, situation and conditions of working agencies/contractors etc.
All these factors vary from project to project and site to site and affect the completion time and cost of the project, which is finally worked out at the completion stage. Therefore, timeline for completion of projects cannot be given.
This information was given by the Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.
whats required are more work packages to run in parallel – perhaps every 100kms completing in 8-10 months time post land acquisition. currently massive lenghts running into 100s of KMs are being given to contractors and they taking considerably long time in execution post land clearance. This has to change. More smaller packages, more works in parallel will considerably reduce completion times, make results visible and fruitful in short time, helps economically with input costs with inflation