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Of the several constraints faced by the Railway Sector, the most serious is sanctioning of a large number of projects, without completing the essential pre-requisites like survey, detailed estimates, adequate resources and proper planning, on the date of commissioning. According to the Project Monitoring Division of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, the Railway Sector has 132 projects, costing Rs.100 crore and above, of which 29 are running behind original schedule. 87 projects do not have original date of commissioning. Latest anticipated date of commissioning is available only in case of 55 projects.
As per a report of the Programme Implementation Ministry, which is monitoring all Central Projects, because of inadequacy in fund allocation to the projects, the Railway Authorities, have not been able to communicate the completion date of projects in hand. In the meantime, 19 new rail projects were also taken up for monitoring by the Statistics and Programme Implementation Ministry.
According to the Ministry’s rating, 39 projects in the Railway Sector are placed in category C, i.e. the projects which have not taken off due to fund constraints or sanctioned without basic preparatory work especially the feasibility study. The Ministry has suggested that a decision about the implementation of these projects need to be taken afresh, in particular, funding them adequately till completion. The Ministry also recommended non-sanctioning of new projects, while the existing projects remained starved of funds. Land acquisition and awarding of contracts, forest clearance also form part of the constraints faced by the Railway Sector, leading to time delay and cost-escalation. In several cases, even the viability studies were not completed, resulting in a number of projects remaining non-starters.
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