Giving ‘Gati’ to Gati Shakti: Long term leasing of Railways Land policy approved

New Delhi: The govt has simplified Railway's land lease policy. The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday approved the Ministry of Railway's proposal to revise the railways' land policy to implement PM Gati Shakti framework for Cargo related activities, Public utilities & Railway's exclusive use. In a statement released Wednesday, the govt has said that "with existing land policies (Railways' land) could not integrate well with other modes of infrastructure. Thus, a need was felt to streamline and simplify Railway's land lease policy to enable faster-integrated planning and development of infrastructure across the country under PM Gati Shakti framework".

Govt has said that the decision will help in attracting more cargo to railways, increase railways' modal share in freight transportation thereby reducing the logistics cost of the industry and at the same time bring more revenue to railways. "This will simplify approvals for utilities as envisaged in PM Gati Shakti Programme. This will further help in the development of public utilities like electricity, gas, water supply, telecom cable, sewage disposal, drains, optical fibre cables (OFC), pipelines, roads, flyovers, but terminals, regional rail transport, urban transport etc. in an integrated manner", the statement added.

This policy amendment will enable employment generation potential of about 1.2 lakh employment.

The government has said that there will be no additional expenditure incurred. "Liberalizing the land leasing policy would open avenues for all stakeholders/service providers/operators to establish more cargo-related facilities and render their participation assisting in the generation of additional cargo traffic and freight revenues to Railways", it said.

Why new policy on Railway land use?

The government's logic is that the extant policy permitted licensing of railway land for a short period of up to five years for any railway-related activity. Such a short-term license period does not attract any serious investors for creating multi-modal cargo hubs. Long-term leasing of railway land for up to 35 years is allowed for leasing government land mainly to Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), thereby limiting the scope of investments in cargo terminals. Since rail is an efficient mode of transport it is essential to more freight by rail so as to reduce the logistics cost of the industry. To enhance the modal share of rail in freight transportation need has been felt to modify the land leasing policy to encourage the development of more cargo terminals.

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