Uttar Pradesh already has another rail coach factory in Rae Bareli. It was originally announced along with the project for Kanchikode.New Delhi: The central government, which has shown a red flag to the rail coach factory at Kanjikode in Palakkad, has cleared two factories on the fast track, both in states run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or its allies. Moreover, other states too have coach factories and allied enterprises.
An agreement for a factory in Latur was rushed through in an urgent meeting between Union Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal and Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadvanis the night before Union finance minister Arun Jaitley was to present the annual budget on February 1 this year. Two months later on March 31, Goyal laid the foundation stone of the factory at Latur.
Goyal had declared at an investors' meet in Uttar Pradesh on February 22 that a coach factory will be set up on 300 acres in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh. The factory will be raised here soon. The target is to roll out the first coach from here within three years. Meanwhile, a rail coach refurbishing factory was inaugurated in the region in Jhansi, UP, in October, 2014. It aims to convert 250 old coaches into new ones every year. The largest one of this kind is in Bhopal.
Uttar Pradesh already has another rail coach factory in Rae Bareli. It was originally announced along with the project for Kanjikode. As the Kanjikode project still remains tied in red tape, 500 coaches are manufactured every year at the Modern Coach Factory, Rae Bareli, and plans are afoot to double production next year.
Another rail coach refurbishing factory, which has the potential to manufacture 500 to 700 coaches every year, is on the anvil for Sonepat, Haryana. It would be set up in the Industrial Estate of Barhi at a cost of about Rs 600 crore.
The Madhepura electric loco factory in Bihar was sanctioned in 2008, a year before Kanjikode was announced by the Manmohan Singh government. The high-power engines are made under partnership with French manufacturers Alstom.
A factory for the maintenance of Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches is at New Bongaigaon, Assam. The Carriage and Wagon Repair Workshop here was conceived in 1965.
Read: Latest Kerala News | Suicide over soccer love not new to Kerala
