Piyush Goyal confident about completion of Ahmedabad-Mumbai Bullet Train Project by 2022

The newly appointed Railway Minister, Piyush Goyal on Monday said that he is being confident about the fact that India would get its first bullet train one before the schedule. 

The Railway Minister said that though the Japanese and Indian authorities had set the target of completion in 2023 but he is sure that it would get finished by August 15, 2022. 

"Country's rail network will be transformed and revolutionised after the advent of bullet train. Railway ministry has opted for Shinkansen technology as it has been a zero-accident train in Japan and I am sure the track record will remain the same in India," Goyal said.

According to railway ministry, the bullet train project will generate nearly 15 lakh jobs in India.

The groundbreaking ceremony (bhoomi-pujan) for the project, coming up at an estimated cost of Rs 98,000 crore, will be held at a ground near the Sabarmati railway station in Ahmedabad on September 14. 

The ceremony would be performed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe. 

81% of the project cost will be in the form of a loan from Japan. As per the detailed project report by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), while most part of the corridor is proposed to be on the elevated track, there will be a stretch after Thane creek towards Virar which will go under the sea. Last year, when Modi visited Japan in November,

it was announced through a joint statement that the construction will commence by the end of 2018, while the groundbreaking ceremony will be held in 2017.