'Railways will not be privatised in any way': Piyush Goyal amid row over pvt participation

Under fire over alleged move to privatise the national transporter, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said that the state-run service will not be privatised "in any way" and participation of private players in running 151 additional modern trains on 109 routes will create new jobs.

"The railway is not being privatized in any way, all the services of the railway currently running will run in the same way. With private participation, 151 additional modern trains will be run on 109 routes, which will not affect railway trains but will generate employment with the arrival of trains," Goyal wrote in Hindi on Twitter.

He further said that private participation in running those 151 trains will increase the availability of seats and will include modern facilities and more security which will benefit the passengers.

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Getting private players on board

On July 2, Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav announced that private train operations are likely to begin by April 2023 and all coaches will be procured under 'Make in India' policy. He said that train sets have to be brought by private operators and maintained by them and if any performance indicators are not met by private players in passenger train operations, they will be penalised. Moreover, he added that private participation in passenger train operations will only be 5% of the total operations of Railways and will result in a quantum jump in technology, higher speeds.

Following this, the Railways formally kickstarted its plans by inviting requests for qualifications (RFQ) for participation on 109 pairs of routes through 151 modern trains. Criticising the decision, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said that the government is in a "desperate mood" to sell a great chunk of one of India's largest national assets.

Later, explaining its public-private partnership model, Railways issued a project information memorandum of its first proposed project. The proposed project which involves private trains to operate in Mumbai (Cluster-1) will go through a two-stage competitive bidding process between interested parties, based on the share offered in the gross revenue of the project. While Railways have divided twelve such cluster project, each cluster will contain trains. It also laid out 10 factors mandated for private players to run trains.

The Railways on Monday said the private companies shall have the freedom to decide on the fare to be charged from its passengers on those trains but held that prices of tickets will be market-driven and based on competitive pricing.

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