Malik takes stock of Amritsar railway station redevelopment

The railway station redevelopment is progressing at a good pace, Malik said; he added that the Amritsar railway station would count as a model for the rest of the country

Amritsar Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Amritsar Rajya Sabha member Shwait Malik on Thursday presided over a high-level meeting of railway officials to take stock of ₹800 crore project for the beautification and overall development of the holy city’s railway station.

Amritsar railway station redevelopment has been a long-pending issue, Rajya Sabha MP Malik said, adding that the facade of the new facility will be developed in PPP mode. (HT file photo)

Divisional railway manager (DRM) Dr Seema Sharma; senior divisional commercial manager Chetan Taneja; senior divisional engineer Abhinav Garg and station director Ashok Salaria were among the other senior officials presented in the meeting. Malik said that when he became MP in 2016, Amritsar railway station was in a decrepit state where there was no system of clean drinking water, clean toilets and even escalators remained non-functional.

Malik added that with support from Prime Minister Narendra Modi; former Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, Piyush Goyal and now Ashwani Vaishnav, the Amritsar Railway Station will be a role model for all stations across the country.

“Development work has been done at ₹500 crore, and another ₹300 crore will be spent on the facade of the station, under the Public Private Partnership Model (PPP) model. We have also built the Chheharta railway station ar ₹60 crore. To connect the inner city with the civil line, a rail bridge has been built on the Bhandari bridge,” he said.