Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitaraman announced a record funding of Rs 1.12 lakh crore outlay for railways, out of which, Rs 1.07 lakh crore is for capital expenditure, the highest-ever till now.   

The Indian Railways has prepared National Rail Plan for India. The plan is to create a future-ready railway system by 2030. The western and eastern dedicated freight corridor will be commissioned by June 2022.   

For passenger convenience and safety, the government has aesthetically designed ‘Vista Dome’. It would further strengthen the safety measures. The government has also announced the launch of the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system, which will prevent train collision due to human error.  

Broad Gauge Route Km (RKM) electrification is expected to reach 46,000 kilometre (RKM) by the end of 2021, which is 72 per cent of the total route. The RKM was 41,548 kms in October 2020. It has increased by 10.17 per cent since then. The government also plans to electrify 100 per cent of the broad-gauge route network by December 2023.   

The government has also initiated the launch of Metro Lite and Metro Neo, which will be deployed on the Indian Railway. These two new products will help the govt to operate at a much cheaper cost, better convenience and safety. It will be launched in the tier-2 cities and the peripheral area of tier-1 cities. A total of 702 kms of Conventional Metro will be operational with another 116 kms expansion work initiated.   Finally, the government announced central fiscal funding for Kochi Metro, Chennai Metro, Bengaluru Metro, Nagpur Metro, and Nashik Metro projects.

Reacting to the developments, the railway-related stocks such as ITD Cementation NCC Ltd  , India Ltd, Larsen & Toubro Ltd, Siemens and KEC International Ltd were trading higher  3 to 4 percent on the NSE, after the announcement.

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