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Mamuni Das

New Delhi , Aug. 5

THE Gujarat Government has asked the Railway Ministry to consider a different route of the proposed Delhi-Mumbai dedicated rail freight corridor.

"Instead of building the dedicated rail freight corridor between Delhi and Mumbai through Mathura, Kota, Ratlam and Vadodara, the Gujarat Government has said that it should be built via Ajmer, Palanpur, Ahmedabad and Vadodara," said an official.

Gujarat, which is closer to the Northern hinterland by about 300 km compared with the JNPT and NSICT terminals in Mumbai, has several minor ports that handle 20-30 per cent of cargo throughput of the country's various ports. Moreover, Gujarat ports handle 80 per cent of total cargo handled by minor ports, added the official.

Thus, if the dedicated rail freight corridor is built in a manner that the Gujarat ports such as Mundra, Kandla, Pipavav, Bedi, Porbandar, Dholera, among others are connected through short feeder routes then the economic viability of the rail freight corridor would also increase, he pointed out.

The Gujarat Government and several port players would be willing to participate in building the corridor, he added.

Moreover, while the route via Kota and Ratlam passes through urban centres, the suggested route through Palanpur, Ahmedabad covers relatively rural areas of Rajasthan and Gujarat. As a result, land acquisition would be much cheaper, easier and result in quicker construction of the rail route, said the official.

Another official pointed out that if the freight corridor is built through Kota and Ratlam, then very many parts of Gujarat would become unviable since in that case, to make use of the benefit of dedicated corridor, the cargo unloaded at these ports would have to be first transported southwards to Mumbai and then loaded for the northern hinterland. At the end of it, cost of transportation from these ports would shoot up.

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