Cabinet okays New Land Policy for Railways to pave way for 300 more cargo terminals

The Union Cabinet on Wednesday approved the Ministry of Railways proposal to revise the railways’ land policy to pave the way for setting up 300 cargo terminals over the next five years under the PM Gati Shakti framework that will create employment for another 1.2 lakh people, according to an official statement.

This will increase the modal share of rail in freight transportation which will bring more revenue for the railways and reduce overall logistics cost in the country, the statement explained.

The policy also simplifies Railways’ land use and Right of Way (ROW) for integrated development of public service utilities like electricity, gas, water supply, sewage disposal, urban transport etc by providing railway land @ 1.5% of market value of land per annum.

For Optical Fibre Cables (OFC) and other smaller diameter underground utilities, a one-time fee of Rs. 1000/- will be charged for crossing railway track.

The policy provides for use of railway land at nominal cost for setting up of solar plants on railway land.

The policy also encourages development of social infrastructure (such as hospitals through PPP and schools through Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangthan) on railway land at a nominal annual fee of Rupee 1 per sqm. per annum.

Background:

Indian Railways organization and network spans the entire country.  However, railways with its existing land policies 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 more cargo terminals across the country under the PM Gati Shakti framework.

Extant policy permits licensing of railway land for a short period 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 up to 35 years is allowed for leasing government land mainly to Public Sector Undertakings, thereby limiting the scope of investments in cargo terminals.