Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened a 351km stretch between Khurja and Bhaupur in Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday for the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) business operations. He also dedicated a state-of-the-art Operations Control Center in Prayagraj to the nation.
The total 2,843 km project – listed as the largest rail infrastructure being built in independent India – has been brewing since 2006 with little movement on the ground. It is finally ready to take off, albeit in phases.
What is the DFC?
The DFC consists of two arms. The section launched on Tuesday is part of the 1,839km East DFC that begins in Sohnewal (Ludhiana) in Punjab and ends in Dankuni in West Bengal. The other arm is the western DFC of around 1,500 km from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to JNPT in Mumbai, touching all the major ports along the way.
The 351 km stretch runs from Khurja, the 12th stop after Sohnewal in the north, to New Bhaupur, near Kanpur. Other sections are from Sohnewal to Khurja (365 km), Bhaupur to Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay (Mughalsarai) (400 km), then to Sonnagar in West Bengal (137 km), then to Dankuni via Gomoh in Jharkhand (538 km) .
There is also a section under construction between Dadri and Khurja to connect the eastern and western arms.
The section opened by PM Modi
Because it is important?
About 70% of the freight trains currently running on India’s rail network are expected to move to freight corridors, leaving the roads open for more passenger trains.
Built at a cost of Rs 5,750 crore through a loan from the World Bank (which finances the majority of the EDFC; the WDFC is being financed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency), the new stations in this section are Bhaupur, Kanchausi, Achalda, Ekdil, Bhadan, Makhanpur, Tundla, Hathras, Daudkan, and Khurja. This section passes through the districts of Kanpur Dehat, Auraiya, Etawah, Firozabad, Hathras, Aligarh and Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh.
This is like building a complete rail network from scratch, independent of Indian Railways. All facilities are new. Including stations, and that is why the names of most of their stations are prefixed with ‘New’, such as New Bhaupur, New Khurja, etc.
DFC tracks are designed to carry heavier loads than most Indian railways. DFC will receive a track access charge from parent Indian Railways and will also generate its own freight business.
What trains will use the new section?
Freight trains running in this section from now on will help decongest the existing Kanpur-Delhi main line of Indian Railways, which currently handles trains at 150% of its line capacity. Currently, this section has more than 50 passenger trains and around 60 freight trains that are pushed daily on the roads. The new section means that on the main line of the Indian Railway, more passenger trains can be pumped and those trains, in turn, can achieve better punctuality.
Food grains and fertilizers from the northern region are transported to the eastern and northeastern regions. From the east and northeast, coal, iron ore, jute, and petroleum products are transported north and west.
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What else will change?
There are some new features for this section. For example, 68 existing level crossings have been removed to increase speed, the only major section of the Indian railways that is free from permanent or temporary speed restrictions. This somehow sets the bar for the rest of the DFC to also make sections free of speed restrictions, or “precautions” as they are called in Railways.
Freight trains often suffer from unpredictable running times and slow speeds of around 25 km per hour. But in this new section they can run at 50-60 km / h.
This section will also capture freight traffic from key hubs such as Kanpur Dehat, Aurayia, Etawah, Firozabad, Hathras, Aligarh and Bulandshahr. The existing industrial areas of Aligarh, Khuja, Firozabad, Agra and Bhaupur will become the main growth centers in the area, as projects by Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation in its business development plan.
These areas are agricultural centers that produce potatoes, rice and corn. “Agricultural products will get an all-India market due to cheaper and faster DFC connectivity,” a DFCCIL spokesperson told The Indian Express.
New Makhanpur (Firozabad) and New Daudkhan (Aligarh) will open as common user terminals targeting local farmers to send their products to the larger markets.
What about the rest of the DFC?
More sections will continue to be ordered in the coming months.
There is a 61% progress on the stretch from Bhaupur to Deen Dayal Upadhyay, and 180 km of the 402 km will be completed on December 21 of the year, while 22 km will be completed in June 2022. Thereafter, the stretch Sonnagar will see 100 km completed by March of next year.
The 401 km section from Khurja to Sanhewal has been only 39% complete. It will be done in June 2022.
A 46 km link between Khurja (east) and Dadri (west) will be ready by March 2021. By December 2021, the Kanpur-Khurja area will connect with the western ports of Kandla, Mundra and Pipava, Dadri-Rewari Section in the western arm, its objective advanced several months.
In the western DFC, the section between Rewari (Haryana) and Madar (Rajasthan) has been completed. The next sections go to Palanpur in Gujarat (to be held in the next three months), then to Makarpura (in March 2022) and finally to JNPT (June 2022).
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