Bhubaneswar: The Railway Ministry was allocated Rs 1,40,367.13 crore in the Union Budget 2022 tabled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday.
And Odisha’s allocation saw a quantum jump with a provision of Rs 9,734 crore for infrastructure and safety projects, marking an increase of 76 per cent over Rs 5,528 crore made in 2021-22, and the highest so far.
With Ashwini Vaishnaw at the helm of the affairs as Railway Minister, this amount is more than the Rs 7,600 crore that the Odisha government had sought for the development of rail infrastructure in the state.
The allocation includes state share and extra-budgetary resources (EBR) like loans and the focus is clearly on developing railway infrastructure in West and South Odisha districts.
One of the oldest and important projects, the Khurda Road-Balangir (289 km) new line, received the highest budgetary allocation of Rs 891 crore, marginally less than last year’s Rs 1,000.5 crore.
Check the allocations for new lines and ongoing projects:
In 2021-22, Odisha had received 60 per cent more than the previous 2020-21 fiscal’s railway budget outlay of Rs 4,373 crore.
In her Budget speech for 2022-23, the FM had mentioned that 400 new energy-efficient Vande Bharat trains would be manufactured in the next three years. The rail sector will also develop “One Station One Product”, which will leverage local produce carried on the railways.
