Only 5% of total trains going private, may have flexi-fare structure, says Railway Board Chairman

The 151 Indian Railway trains going the private route are only 5% of the total number of trains running in the country, said Chairman of Railway Board (CRB), VK Yadav.

“Indian Railways has a total of 2,800 trains that run across India out of which only 5% are going private. At least 95% percent of the trains will still be run by the Indian Railways. The private players will have to pay some share of revenue also – that is the bidding parameter. The bidder with the highest share will get the contract,” he said.

“We are revenue-neutral, we will recover our expenses through the haulage charges in every locomotive. We have also put an energy charge so that private players aim to provide more energy-efficient trains,” he added.

Admitting that the Railways is incurring massive losses in passenger trains, CRB told India Today, “We have a projection of an increase of at least 13 billion passengers by 2030 so we need more trains. As far as the fares are concerned, they (private players) may have to increase the fares on demand and may even decrease the fares, depending on the passenger traffic. This is similar to the concept of flexi-fares.

Skirting the question around whether any Chinese company would be allowed to bid for the tender, CRB said that all protocols mentioned in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade will be followed. There has been a pre-bid review meeting just a fortnight ago, where several companies who have expressed interest were present, however, the names have been withheld.

The date of the request for quotation (RFQ) will be in September and it will be finalised in two months. Railways will be monitoring some key performance indicators such as the number of failures and that the punctuality should be more than 95%. As per the Make in India policy, the coaches will need to be manufactured in India.

CRB also informed about the 12 clusters: these are Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi Cluster 1 and Cluster 2, Howrah, Jaipur, Mumbai cluster 1 and cluster 2, Patna, Prayagraj and Secunderabad.

The Indian Railways is expecting that the work for this should be done in six to eight months. The financial bids will be opened by February or March 2021. The expectation is that these trains should roll out by 2023.

There are fears that privatisation will decrease jobs in the Indian Railways. Yadav said it is completely baseless to say so.

However, railway unions disagree. “Wherever things are privatised, they have not been able to work as much as those in the government have done. Even during the pandemic, only the government based doctors, nurses, paramedical staff and even the railways did were working to provide supplies across the country. If we can make the Vande Bharat express then why do we need to privatise the Indian Railways,” said Shiv Gopal Mishra, General Secretary, All India Railwaymen’s Federation.