Railway utilised 98 pc capex by Feb-end; trains to dominate flights in new corridors: Vaishnaw

Indian Railways utilised 98 per cent of its budget for FY26, reflecting the pace of execution of projects, and in the days to come, trains will dominate flights on several upcoming corridors across the country, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Monday. ''In the last financial year, the entire capex was spent practically by the 1st week of March itself. Practically by the last week of February, it was like 98 points some percentage. Then we had to, in a sense stop that because we have to complete the entire year,'' Vaishnaw said. He said 49,000 kilometres of railway tracks across the country has been electrified, which is more than the entire network of Germany and 36,000 kilometres of new tracks have been added, which is about six Switzerlands to Indian railway network. The minister said in many of these routes the travel time will be significantly reduced and people will prefer trains over airlines on those routes. Vaishnaw said the government is working on new corridors from Mumbai to Pune where travel time will come down to just 28 minutes, Pune to Hyderabad will be one hour and 55 minutes, Hyderabad to Bengaluru will be around 2 hours. ''So nobody will fly. These sectors will be out for airlines. I'm reminding right away for those who want to invest in airlines. These sectors will be 99 per cent dominated by railways,'' Vaishnaw said. He said Bengaluru to Chennai will become two cities combined into one city with travel time between them reduced to 78 minutes. ''Delhi to Varanasi will be 3 hours and 50 minutes. Delhi to Lucknow will be significantly lesser, just about 2 hours,'' Vaishnaw added.

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