Cabinet clears ₹13,041 crore rail, highway projects
Four rail projects will add 410 km to the network across West Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, while a four-lane highway in Bihar will cut travel time between Muzaffarpur and Sonbarsa.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sanctioned four railway expansion projects totaling ₹13,041 crore on Wednesday. These initiatives, targeting the Howrah-Chennai high-density network and a highway in Bihar, aim to bolster connectivity and infrastructure development. The Howrah-Chennai route, a vital rail corridor, joins other heavily utilized routes like Mumbai-Chennai, Delhi-Mumbai, and Delhi-Howrah.
The approved projects will add approximately 410 kilometers of track, boosting connectivity to around 6,448 villages and 6 million people. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw highlighted that these seven key routes account for 40% of traffic despite representing only 11% of India's total rail network. Four of the projects focus on railway lines, including the quadrupling of the Cuttack-Paradeep route, which will facilitate 12 million tonnes of annual freight traffic.
Additionally, the government approved a four-lane highway linking Muzaffarpur and Sonbarsa in Bihar for ₹3,591 crore, with the objective of reducing travel time between the two locations from 2 hours to 1 hour and improving access to religious and tourist sites.
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