E-Paper
'Property of every Indian': Piyush Goyal says no plan to privatise railways
The country, Goyal said, can progress towards high growth and create more employment opportunities only when the public and private sectors work together.
Railways minister Piyush Goyal said on Tuesday the government does not plan to hand over the railways sector to private players and said that Indian Railways will never be privatised, adding private investment should be encouraged for more efficient functioning. The country, Goyal said, can progress towards high growth and create more employment opportunities only when the public and private sectors work together.
"Indian Railways will never be privatised. It is a property of every Indian and will remain so,” the minister said while addressing the ongoing Parliament session in the Lok Sabha, adding that it will remain with the government of India.
The railways minister also said no passenger has died in any rail accident after March 2019. "We are focusing on passenger safety. I am happy to say that there has been no passenger death in the past two years (2019-2021). The last death due to train accident happened in March 2019," the minister told the Lok Sabha, reported PTI.
Goyal said the central government has hiked investment in railways to ₹2.15 lakh crore in 2021-22 fiscal, from ₹1.5 lakh crore in 2019-20 fiscal.
Last week, HT reported that the railways is considering having private companies operate 90 train stations and is exploring several options – including looking at the arrangements at India’s privately-run airports – to determine how best to set up the security infrastructure at these.
Railways, which runs the fourth-largest such network in the world, set the ball rolling in 2019 on letting private companies run and operate certain stations in a public-private partnership (PPP) model. The move, steered by the Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation (IRSDC) is expected to help significantly modernise parts of a decades-old system.
The Railway Board, in a letter reviewed by HT, sought the opinion from all principal chief security commissioners of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and all zonal railways on how the security infrastructure for the 90 stations should be set up.
