Lok Sabha Debates
Demand To Reconsider Privatisation Of The Bullet Train. on 28 December, 2017
Sixteenth Loksabha an> Title: Demand to reconsider privatisation of the bullet train.
SHRI PARTHA PRATIM RAY (COOCHBEHAR): Hon. speaker Madam, the bullet train project between Ahmedabad and Mumbai has a construction cost of around Rs. 1,10,000 crore. This is more than the cost of Dedicated Freight Corridor which costs Rs. 81,000 crore but enables freight transport across nine States.
Madam, Rs. 22,000 crore of the total cost of the bullet train is to be financed by the Government of India. This amount itself is more than the annual budgetary support to the Railway Safety Fund, which is Rs. 20,000 crore.
Although the Government claims that the terms of Rs. 88,000 crore loan from Japanese Government tantamount to a grant, it is a significant burden on India. I want to say that the government should not be privatizing bullet trains when an average of 115 railway accidents happen every year and more than a lakh posts of railway safety officials are lying vacant in India.