38,650 Km Length of Railway Electrification Achieved Till Oct 2023: Report
38,650 km length of railway electrification has been achieved since 2014 till 31 October 2023, the information was given by the Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronic & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.
The Railway projects are executed Zonal Railway-wise, not State-wise, as the Railways’ projects may span state boundaries. As of 1 April 2023 across Indian Railway, 231 Doubling projects of total length 20,296 km, costing approximately Rs 2.70 lakh crore are in the planning, approval and construction stage, out of which 5,455 km length has been commissioned and an expenditure of nearly Rs 1.03 lakh crore has been incurred upto March 2023.
Among all the states, as per the data of 31 October 2023, Uttar Pradesh stands at the top with 8,516 Km of electrified railway, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 4,857 Km and Odisha with 2,849 Km.
The completion of the Electrification project depends on various factors like forest clearances by officials of the forest department, shifting of infringing utilities, statutory clearances from various authorities, geological and topographical conditions of the area, law & order situation in the area of the project site, number of working months in a year for particular project site due to climatic conditions etc. All these factors affect the completion time of the project. As such the confirmed time frame for completion of the project cannot be ascertained at this stage.
The expansion of electrified railways will help the nation to achieve its sustainable objectivity in the form of clean and green modes of transport, reduction in carbon emissions and saving in precious foreign exchange for crude oil.
