New Delhi: Indian Railways on Tuesday (July 21) held a first pre-bid meeting on private player train project. Ministry of Railways has invited request for qualification (RFQ) from private players to run passenger trains on 109 important routes.
Indian Railways is expecting a private investment of Rs 30,000 crore in the private player train project, which has attracted the interest of top Indian companies including Tata Group, Adani Port, Essel Group, Bombardier India, and Alstom.
The Ministry aims to complete the bidding process soon, and start running the first private player train by March 2023.
Meanwhile, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has made it clear that private player train is not a privatization of Indian Railways.
Notably, the government has been claiming that rail passengers will be the biggest beneficiaries of the private player train project.
Earlier, the government had initiated the Request for Quotation (RFQ) process for receiving questions or queries from the private players and the last date for this process was July 16. All the received questions will be answered by July 31, the ministry had earlier said.
After the second pre-bid meeting, the Ministry will send answers to all the questions by August 21. The government is looking to invite applications from private players to invest in the project till September 8.
