India to get seven new routes for high-speed bullet trains as NHAI prepares to acquire more land

The Indian Railways and the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will begin the process of acquiring additional land for running bullet trains on seven new routes, giving the country a huge network of high-speed trains.

It is being said that the NHAI will soon procure land to lay tracks for the project along the greenfield expressways for integrated development of the rail transport network in the country.

A meeting with a group of infrastructure ministers was chaired by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari recently during which the decision to acquire land was taken. 

A four-member committee was constituted during the meeting to take the process forward. It will work out the modalities for acquiring land and sharing the cost. 

Notably, Indian Railways is already in the process of preparing the blueprint of the seven high-speed rail routes. 

As per reports, Railways is considering running bullet trains on seven important new routes. These are Delhi to Varanasi via Noida, Agra and Lucknow; Varanasi to Howrah via Patna; Delhi to Ahmedabad via Jaipur and Udaipur; Delhi to Amritsar via Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Jalandhar; Mumbai to Nagpur via Nasik; Mumbai to Hyderabad via Pune and Chennai to Mysore via Bangalore.

Railways has also given details of seven high-speed rail corridors to NHAI for running bullet trains.

For better integration of the exercise, NHAI has been asked to depute a nodal officer.