Indian Railways will need capital investment of around 50 lakh crore rupees till 2030, Minister for Railways Piyush Goyal told Lok Sabha in a written reply.
This is the quantum of investment needed for network expansion, capacity augmentation, induction of new rolling stock and overall modernization, the minister explained in his response to a query in the Lok Sabha.
As part of the National Infrastructure Pipeline, investment of approximately 13 lakh crores is planned in the Indian Railways over five years.
Goyal also stated that better passenger and freight services will result from this investment and the Indian Railways could improve its modal share in the transport business. He also clarified that Public Private Partnership (PPP) will be used for some initiatives to bridge this gap in capital funding for bringing in modern technology and improve efficiency on the system.
Private Train Operations are part of this initiative.
The Ministry of Railways issued 12 Requests for Qualification (RFQs) on 1st July 2020 for the operation of passenger trains over approximately 109 origin-destination pairs (divided into 12 clusters) through PPP. See list of proposed routes here.
Operators will run trains on Design, Build, Finance and Operate basis.
However, the responsibility of train operations and safety certification rests with Indian Railways in all such cases.