The Centre has identified critical infrastructure gaps across the proposed industrial corridors in the country and has drawn up a plan to provide rail and road connectivity to overcome these.
An internal assessment discovered none of the nodes on the planned industrial corridors have rail connectivity to ports. To address these concerns, 24 new railway and 15 new road projects have been identified. The assessment found that just 10 nodes were connected by a National Highway (NH) or with a four-lane road connecting to a NH. There are 28 road projects spanning 523 km for bettering access to good roads from industrial corridor nodes. Of these, the new identified projects cover 306 km.
“No node has last mile rail connectivity at present. But for three nodes, Dholera, Dadri, and Nangal Chaudhary, rail connectivity has been proposed or is in-progress,” a senior government official told ET, adding that 24 new railway sidings spanning over 224 km have been proposed for last mile connectivity to nodes.
In all there are 48 rail projects spread across 2612 km. There are 14 augmentation projects over 1806 km and 34 new projects including railways sidings covering 806 km.
According to the National Industrial Corridor Programme, which began in 2007, there are 11 industrial corridors comprising of 32 nodes to be developed in four phases. These nodes are the points along the corridors where industrial hubs and production units would come up.
