Indian Railways rolls out National Rail Plan for 2051

The Indian Railways in its new draft National Rail Plan (NRP) stated that by 2051 several cities across India including Hyderabad will be connected via bullet trains. The development comes close on the heels of the National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) floating tenders for preparation of Detailed Project Report (DPR) for Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad bullet train project. The draft NRP aims to develop a corridor between Hyderabad and Bengaluru by extending the Mumbai-Hyderabad line proposed earlier. This new corridor will connect Mumbai to Chennai and help bring cities in North India such as Jammu, Amritsar, Delhi and Jaipur closer to Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Apart from the corridor between Hyderabad and Bengaluru, the NRP released by Railway Board CEO VK Yadav boasts of the country's most ambitious infrastructure program aiming to develop new industrial cities as Smart Cities' and converging next-generation technologies across infrastructure sectors. The NRP also aims to develop Nagpur-Hyderabad (NHIC) and Delhi-Nagpur (DNIC) as industrial corridors under its National Industrial Corridor Development Program. The two industrial corridors are among 11 projects to be developed in four phases up to 2024-25. Apart from the two industrial corridors, the draft NRP is focused at establishing a dedicated freight corridor (DFC) North-South between Delhi-Chennai via Itarsi Nagpur-Vijayawada. With Indian Railway's focus on augmenting railway infrastructure to facilitate the movement of freight and passengers, the NRP has identified multiple high-speed railway (HSR) corridors.