Indian Railways shortlists 15 train routes for private operation, metro cities in focus

The central government has identified the 15 railway routes across the country for which private players will be invited to operate on, sources said on Monday, adding that the focus is on improving connectivity primarily between four metropolitan cities - New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Chennai - since they're always in high demand.

As an initial step, the Ministry of Railways will invite private players in the next 15 days to start the bidding process for these routes. After floating this Request for Qualification (RFQ), the bidders who get qualified will be shortlisted at a later stage.

Among the 15 shortlisted routes are ten long-distance and five short-distance routes.

The 10 long-distance routes are mainly between the metro cities -

Mumbai - Kolkata
Mumbai - Chennai
Mumbai - Guwahati
New Delhi - Mumbai
Thiruvananthpuram - Guwahati
New Delhi - Kolkata
New Delhi - Bengaluru
New Delhi - Chennai
Chennai - Kolkata
Chennai - Jodhpur

The five non-metro short-distance routes are -

Lucknow-Gorakhpur
Kota-Jaipur
Chandigarh-Lucknow
Nagpur-Pune
Vishakhapatnam-Tirupati

As for the bidding process, the terms for the deal have already been set. Railway Board Chairman Vinod Yadav said that the Ministry of Railways will only make a deal with the private player that shares the maximum amount of revenue with the Government of India.

Here's what a private player operating on these railway routes would mean. According to the government, the private operators will only be allowed to run the trains and provide onboard services like entertainment, linen, catering, etc. However, everything else including the infrastructure, railway tracks, locks, signalling, etc will still be run and controlled by the Indian Railways. Moreover, the private players will be given the choice to get their own trains or they can even opt to lease state-owned trains from the Indian Railways. This unique public-private property sharing deal has already been approved by the Public-Private Partnership Appraisal Committee (PPPAC).

According to Zee News sources, many travel & tour operators like MakeMyTrip and few airlines have also shown interest in this reformative step of the railways. Within a week, the Railways Ministry will be calling for an important meeting with the interested private players and will address any issue or query raised by them.

The sources added that four to five private players may be picked up by the Ministry that can be seated on board to run private player operated trains. A few other prominent routes that are actively under consideration and can be floated for bidding based on the response of the first process are -- Mumbai-Varanasi, Mumbai-Pune, Mumbai-Lucknow, Mumbai-Nagpur, Secunderabad-Vishakhapatnam, Patna-Bengaluru, Pune-Patna, Chennai-Coimbatore, Chennai-Secunderabad, Surat-Varanasi, and Bhubneshwar-Kolkata.