Centre clears Rs. 31,196-cr rail lines

Injecting a major booster to the rail network in Maharashtra, Centre government has recently sanctioned the construction of at least 7 new railway lines for Maharashtra entailing a whopping investment of Rs. 31,196cr. All these new lines, 3,123 km long among other projects have been sanctioned by the government in the Union Budget 2017-18 presented by Finance Minister and the projects also included the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST)-Panvel fast elevated corridor. It may be recalled that Maharashtra has got budgetary allocations to the tune of Rs. 5,958-cr for upcoming fiscal, which is 408% higher than the average allocation of last five years. Out of seven new lines, four big ticket projects included Fast Elevated Corridor between CST to Panvel (55-km with initial cost of Rs. 14,525cr), Vasai-Virar-Panvel Corridor (72-km new suburban corridor with initial cost of Rs.8,787cr), and 3rd and 4th suburban lines between Pune and Lonavala (64-km with initial project cost of Rs. 4,253cr) and Bandra-Virar Elevated Rail Corridor (Phase I) (42-km with initial cost of Rs 762cr). The other three new railway lines are: 78 km Jeur-Ashti (Rs. 1,560cr), 105 km Phaltan-Pandharpur (Rs. 1,149cr), and 8 km Hatkanangale-Ichalkaranji (Rs.160cr).