Railways to operate trains on PPP basis from Chandigarh

Amarjot Kaur

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, August 21

The Ministry of Railways has included Chandigarh among 12 clusters for passenger trains to be operated by private entities.

According to the cluster’s request for qualification (RFQ) document, a total of 18 passenger trains on selected routes forming part of Chandigarh will be operated through public-private partnership (PPP) on design, build, finance and operate basis. The indicative cost of the project is pegged at Rs 2,510 crore. The ministry has decided to carry out the bidding process for selection of private entities as bidders to whom the project may be awarded.

DRM, Ambala Division, GM Singh, said, “The bidding process for these trains is likely to begin in the first week of September this year.”

In June, the ministry identified around 100 origin destination pairs for such trains, which were grouped in 12 clusters. Each cluster is required to operate a minimum of 12 trains.

Of 18 origin destination pairs on Chandigarh cluster, 14 will ply from the city station on daily basis, whereas four will be operated on tri-weekly basis.

The pairs that will operate daily through and from Chandigarh include, Delhi-Amritsar, Delhi-Chandigarh, Lucknow-Katra, Varanasi-Bathinda, Nagpur-Chandigarh and Bhopal-Mumbai. Running on tri-weekly basis are trains from Amritsar to Faizabad (and back) and Bhopal to Pune (and back).