Last December, Kerala's Finance Minister K N Balagopal had said that the Centre's approval for the SilverLine Semi High Speed Rail Project would come at the earliest. And in the second week of January, when proceedings related to land acquisition for the project had begun, the Centre had taken a seemingly favourable stand in the High Court. It said a central notification was not required for land acquisition related to the semi high speed project.
Just when it seemed the Centre would green-flag the Rs-64,000-cr project, Union minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw has sprung a surprise. In a statement laid before the Parliament on Wednesday (February 2), the minister said that the SilverLine project “is not yet sanctioned”.
“No sir,” the minister said in response to the question “whether the Union Government has given permission/NOC to Government of Kerala for the start of the work of K-Rail”. “Consideration of the project depends upon the techno-economic viability of the project,” Vaishnaw said. The questions were raised by Kerala parliamentarians N K Premachandran and K Muraleedharan.
The Detailed Project Report (DPR) should have been the document for assessing the techno-economic viability. But the DPR submitted by Kerala Rail Development Corporation Limited (K-Rail) has been found to be inadequate.
“DPR is under examination by the Ministry of Railways. Sufficient details for technical feasibility are not available in the DPR. Therefore, KRDCL has been advised to provide detailed technical documents such as alignment plan, particulars of railway land and private land, crossings over existing railway network, duly depicting affected railway assets through Zonal Railway for detailed examination of the project and to arrive at conclusion about feasibility of project,” the Union minister said.
The DPR submitted has an alignment plan but it has been criticised for providing the detailed plan of only half the stretch of the line. It has also been alleged that the submitted alignment masks the curvy nature of the northern part of the SilverLine.
Financial viability of the project will be examined only after the finalisation of the technical parameters. Nonetheless, the minister said that K-Rail had submitted an application for availing financing to the tune of ₹ 33,700 cr from various multilateral funding agencies (JICA, ADB, AII and KfW) to the Department of Economic Affairs.
The Minister for Railways also said that Kerala had not submitted any environment impact assessment (EIA). The Kerala government, though it had conducted a rapid EIA, is of the view that EIAs were not necessary for railway projects.
SilverLine vs Vande Bharat
Meanwhile, K-Rail has been quick to quash opinions that Vande Bharat trains were a better alternative to the SilverLine. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Seetharaman had declared in her Budget 2022-23 speech that 400 Vande Bharat Trains "with better energy efficiency and passenger riding experience" would be developed and manufactured during the next three years.
Even Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, who was reluctant to junk the SilverLine project, said Vande Bharat trains were a better solution to Kerala's need for fast and environment-friendly transport.
In an official release, K-Rail said that Vande Bharat trains had been certified to run at a speed of 160 km per hour. This was only marginally less than the proposed 200 km per hour average speed of SilverLine.
"However, the tracks of Kerala have maximum sectional speed varying from 80 km per hour to 110 km per hour. So Vande Bharat trains, if run in Kerala, can achieve the same running time of trains like Jan Shatabdi and Rajdhani, the fastest trains now running in Kerala," the statement said.
Further, it said that to upgrade the existing railway network in Kerala to make it fit to run Vande Bharat trains at 160 km per hour, 626 curves totalling 36% of the length of the existing track was to be straightened at a very high capital cost. "This upgradation process may take more than 10 to 20 years since the upgradation has to be done along with running of train services," it added.
The frequency of trains was also held up as a major advantage of SilverLine. "SilverLine contemplates to run 37 trains daily in each direction with one train every 20 minutes during peak hours. These many number of Vande Bharat trains cannot be run in the existing railway network in Kerala which is already saturated," the K-Rail statement said.
