Indian Railways Unveils New Plans
By Arnab Ghosh, Gaea News NetworkSaturday, June 26, 2010
NEW DELHI, INDIA (GaeaTimes.com)- Indian railway has extensive plans to improve its service and offer new facility to the passengers in the coming days. Not only it is offering newer trains and routes every month it is also trying to offer value added services to the passengers. The recent website revamp and extension of e ticketing service is one such example that has won it accolades from all. It has also decided to lease its surplus land for the purpose of setting up ancillary units and auto hubs. In fact the railways has a plan to establish 9 such hubs in the present financial year. The land will be leased out for a period of 7 years initially after which the tenure can be renewed.
The new move is a port of the scheme to set up more hubs for automobile industry. It became effective on June 16. The Indian Railway has 46,000 acres of vacant land out of 4.31 lakh acre as of now. In fact one such auto hub is now functional and it is in Howrah. The auto hubs will be built on the PPP model. The auto hubs were earlier meant to be leased only for three years but automobile industry representatives objected to that saying more time will be required for the companies to recover initial cost.
Indian railway also has plans to set up technical and educational institutions of high standards on its surplus land. The Union Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee however has indicated that the land lease should be done with an eye to long term profits of the railways.
