Railways to electrify 500 km in current fiscal: Official

Tiruchirapalli, June 7 (UNI) The Indian Railways has embarked on an initiative to electrify 500 route km across the country this fiscal.

Addressing a press conference here this evening Central Organization for Railway Electrification (CORE) General Manager R Mohan Doss said though the approximate fund requirement for the electrification work would be around Rs 425 crore, the Railway Board has sanctioned Rs 317 crore. The balance would get approval in the supplementary budget.

So far 17,811 route km had been electrified with the figure for the last year alone being 360 route km.The Railway Ministry had approved electrification of 3,500 to 4,000 route km in the XI Five Year Plan.

To a query, he said the much-awaited electrification work between the 170 km stretch from Villupuram to Tiruchirapalli would be completed by April 2008.

In the first phase, the Villupuram-Vriddachalam work would be completed by September this year. Work on the section upto Ariyalur would be over by January 2008 and the entire project was slated for completion in April 2008.

The section between Tiruvananthapuram and Kanyakumari (87 km) was also included in the current year programme for which tenders had been floated for procurement of overhead equipments. Work on the Rs 54 crore project would commence within the next four months.

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