Niti Aayog comes up with draft documents for discussion on private participation in passenger trains

New Delhi: Niti Aayog on Tuesday floated draft documents, including

Request for Qualification and Project Information Memorandum, to seek stakeholder comments on them, which are aimed at paving the way for the participation of private entities in operation of passenger trains on 100 routes.

The Ministry of Railways and the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog are spearheading participation of private entities in operation of passenger trains on 100 routes.

In this respect, a draft of Request for Qualification (RFQ) document, Concession Agreement Guiding Principles, Project Information Memorandum (PIM) along with a presentation on the salient features of the project (draft documents) have been uploaded on the Aayog website.

Stakeholders can review the draft documents and provide written comments by January 17, 2020.

The Niti Aayog and Indian Railways had last week came out with a discussion paper for running 150 trains on 100 routes by private operators, envisaging an investment of Rs 22,500 crore.

The discussion paper titled ‘Private Participation: Passenger Trains’ had identified 100 routes, including Mumbai Central-New Delhi, New Delhi- Patna, Allahabad-Pune and Dadar-Vadodara.

Other prominent routes included Howrah-Chennai, Howrah Patna, Indore-Okhla, Lucknow-Jammu Tawi, Chennai-Okhla, Anand Vihar-Bhagalpur, Secunderabad-Guwahati and Howrah-Anand Vihar.

The paper, prepared for discussions with stakeholders, had split the 100 routes into 10-12 clusters.

As per the paper, the private operator will have the right to collect market-linked fares and will be provided with the flexibility of class composition and halts.

The privatisation of train operation, the paper said, will help in introducing modern technology and rolling stocks with reduced maintenance.