India sets another record for rail electrification

India sets another record for rail electrification

Despite restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, Indian Railways (IR) is aiming to meet the government’s target of electrifying the country’s entire broad gauge network by December 2023. The Central Organization for the Electrification of Railways (CORE) announced that a record 6015 route kilometers of electrified lines were commissioned during the 2020/2021 fiscal year (through March 31). This is reported by the railway magazine Railway Supply with reference to the Railway Gazette.

CORE Executive Director Bhoopender Singh Bodh said he was very pleased with what had been achieved.

For comparison, in previous years, 4378 km (2019/2020 fiscal year) and 5276 km (2018/2019) were electrified.

The works included a number of “missing links” to complete the supply of electricity on 15 key corridors such as Mumbai-Howrah, Delhi-Darbhanga-Jainagar, Mumbai-Bareli and others.

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The installation of over 24 thousand km of lines over the past seven years has increased the share of the electrified network in the country from 40% to 66%. In this regard, the growth in the use of electric traction in some regions reached 85% in freight and 98% in passenger traffic. 100% electrification has been achieved in the Chandigarh and Puducherry regions, as well as in Delhi. This has resulted in significant savings in diesel purchases.

Over the past six years, the Indian government has approved 204 separate projects for the electrification of lines with a total length of over 30,000 km.

The Indian railways are not planning to slow down. The electrification budget for fiscal 2021/2022 is Rs 75.4 billion (€ 870 million), up from Rs 66 billion in the previous year.

The total length of Indian railways is over 64 thousand km.

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