Page 47 - 15FEB2019E

INTERVIEW

This is a government in which the work threat. How do you see this run by High Speed Rail Corporation.
is done with mutual consent between development?
the ministries. Mutual agreement and We have created the way of security in Do you think all is well in the Railway
mutual dialogue between our minis- our country and we are standing at par Ministry?
tries remain constant. Therefore, there with any country in the world. We will The people who understand the Rail-
is no difference between both Telecom test all equipments of any country and way Ministry know what were the real
and IT departments and there is no we will use only those products that will problems of Railways. The problem
dispute. Whatever the topic is, both clear our test. of railways was that after the Inde-
the ministries sit together and agree pendence, the number of passengers
on decisions. Then we have formed a Initially you were given the charge increased by 23-24 times and the
National Digital Communication Policy of the Minister of State for Railways. freight increased by 10 times but the
and we have received a huge support The prime minister had a dream investment did not increase. We could
from that ministry. I can say that the bullet train under the Ministry of add on the railway line by 40-45 per
vision we have placed in front of the Railways. Do you feel that this will cent after Britishers left. Ever since the
country it has secured our place in 50 be true and is ground reality in its remaining halfway on petrol and diesel
countries of the world. For this, we have favor? in this country, investment in the high-
created a council. We have emphasized It is absolutely possible. Ahmedabad way sector was 6 times higher than the
on Fimbriation and I can say that we corridor will start in 2022, which will be Railways. I want to thank Prime Minis-
have been working together with the ter Narendra Modi for understanding
concerned Ministry to make Digital the requirements of Indian Railways.
India successful. ‘All the coalitions He considered the means of
and all the caste transportation of common man and
America, Japan, Canada, UK, increased investment. In general, the
Germany, Australia and New Zealand equations will be average investment in various pro-
have already taken steps to block broken and Modi ji jects before 2014 was 48-49,000 crore,
the purchase of equipments from increasing it our government has in-
Huawei and ZTE. Telecom Export will again become the vested 1,30,000 crores and this year, we
Body TEPC has requested National Prime Minister of the have invested 1,48,000 crore rupees
Security Advisor Ajit Doval to ban in various sectors of Indian Railways.
the purchase of equipment from country with huge With this we have done the work of
Chinese companies like Huawei, ZTE majority and Uttar doubling, electrification, third line, loop
and Fiberholm, for the government line, satellite station. Once this work
network, claiming that they can Pradesh will make will be completed, we will get rid of the
create a serious national security congestion of the Indian Railways, es-
him PM’ pecially on the trunk route. It will help
in running trains securely and on time.

Are you also trying to make
investments that can fix the tracks
and can assure the safety of the
tracks that can help trains run
during haze or fog, and protect them
from accidents?
The renewal of Indian railway tracks
was pending in the previous govern-
ments. We have completed the track
renewal on priority basis. If you see the
new line, doubling, electrification, we
are doing 3 times more than what it
used to be. So, our speed is fine and the
investment is fine. We are working on
safety, security and punctuality; these
three are the basic principles of railway.

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40-47 Q&A Anil Singh.indd 9 2/1/2019 8:18:33 PM