For the seventh time in a decade, the Eastern and Western Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) will be postponed. Due to pandemic-related obstacles and land acquisition delays, the projects’ completion timetable has been delayed by two years.
India’s Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation has updated its completion projections for the Railway Ministry. It requested a deadline of 2023 for the Eastern DFC and 2024 for the Western DFC.
The DFCs were supposed to be finished by the end of the month. The most recent prolongation will be the fifth adjustment to the two DFCs’ completion timelines. Originally, the project was scheduled to be completed in 2017. It has been extended four times since then, to March 2018, March 2020, December 2021, and June 2022.
Marred by Covid-induced delays in land acquisition, contractual fulfilment, and cash flow concerns, DFCC — in its project status report in December — stated, “Progress of works is badly affected in the second wave and targets are likely to be delayed.”
The revised timelines, however, have upset the ministry of railways, which, in its internal communications, expressed dissatisfaction. It sought advancing the targets, said officials in the know.
“There were internal concerns over the revised targets. We thought DFCC could have implemented certain things faster, but after consultations over its issues as the executing agency, there is consensus to go forward with the proposed targets,” said a senior official.
The new target, although farther than anticipated, is a more realistic one, a railways official said.
There have also been lags in capital expenditure (capex) by DFCC. As of March, the government-owned firm has spent a little more than two-thirds of its Rs 15,000-crore capex target for the financial year 2021-22, the company’s internal reports show.
DFCC has so far commissioned 1,010 kilometres (km) of the proposed 2,843 km, pertaining to stretches undertaken by the government for both the corridors. A 538-km stretch between Sonnagar in Bihar and Dankuni in West Bengal is being developed under PPP mode.
Since its inception in 2007, the government’s marquee logistics project has undergone several delays due to concerns over land acquisition and contract-awarding lags.
The agency had cited issues with procurement of imported goods and rising prices of steel as challenges to timely execution. There have been cost overruns due to repeated delays. The initial cost estimate of Rs 21,040 crore was revised to Rs 81,459 crore in 2015, and is now likely to be revised to over Rs 1.24 trillion.
Business Standard had previously reported that the ministry is expected to move the Union Cabinet to sanction the revised cost soon. Freight corridors are special tracks made for goods trains, aimed at decongesting the rail network and ensuring quicker movement of goods.
