Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal recently reviewed the progress of the ongoing project by the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation India Limited (DFCCIL) and pushed for its earliest completion.
The project, which comprises of the Western Corridor connecting Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT) in Mumbai and Eastern Corridor starting from Sahnewal near Ludhiana (Punjab), scheduled to terminate at Dankuni in West Bengal – shall be completed by December 2021. Senior officials had briefed the minister of the current status of the project during the virtual meeting conducted via video conferencing.
Mr Goyal directed the DFFCIL management team to necessary steps to speed up the project to compensate the loss of time due to lockdown during COVID. He also advised the officials to identify the most challenging area and come up with solution in a mission mode. He suggested that involving young fresh minds to suggest best solutions may be encouraged.
It was also decided that strict monitoring of work of all contractors to be done.
Resolution of all issues,including coordination with the States, are expected to be done on a Mission mode. Innovative mechanisms to constantly monitor the weekly progress of the project are also in talks to be evolved.
Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) is one of the big-ticket infrastructure projects undertaken by the Government of India with its overall cost pegged at INR 81,459 crores.
DFCCIL has been set up as a special purpose vehicle to undertake planning, development, mobilization of financial resources, construction, maintenance and operation of Dedicated Freight Corridors. In the first phase, the organisation is constructing the Western DFC (1504 Route km) and Eastern DFC (1856 route km) spanning a total length of 3360 route km.
