There is no proposal to privatise the Indian Railways. It is estimated that Railway Infrastructure would need an investment of Rs. 50 lakh crores between 2018-2030. To bridge the gap in the Capital funding, Public-Private partnership mode is envisaged to facilitate faster development of network, manufacturing of rolling stocks and delivery of passenger and freight services.

       There are also a proposal to use Public Private Partnership mode for inducting modern rakes to run passenger trains on select routes with an objective to provide improved service delivery to passengers. However, the responsibility of train operations and safety certification rests with Indian Railways in all such cases.

             Towards this objective, Ministry of Railways (MoR) has invited bids for induction of approximately 150 pairs of passenger train services to be operated over select routes through Public Private Partnership (PPP).  These train services to be operated in PPP mode shall be additional trains, aimed at increasing the availability of train services to the public. In view of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the bid opening due date for RFP (Requests for Proposal) stage has been rescheduled to 23.07.2021.   

              All the existing employees are to be retained in the above proposal.

This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha today.

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