The Indian Railways is considering letting private firms manage 90 train stations and is looking at a variety of alternatives, including looking at the arrangements at India’s privately owned airports, to see how best to set up security infrastructure.
Railways, which operates the world’s fourth-largest such network, started the process of allowing private businesses to manage and operate those stations under a public-private partnership (PPP) model in 2019. The step is intended to help dramatically modernize sections of a decades-old infrastructure through the Indian Railway Stations Development Corporation (IRSDC).
In a letter obtained by the media, the Railway Board requested input on how the security infrastructure for the 90 stations should be set up from all principal chief security commissions of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and all zonal railways.
One of the solutions, according to the letter, is to reproduce the airports’ model, in which the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), a government paramilitary organization, is hired by the operator and paid by the operator.
According to the letter, a committee looking at these specifics has recommended that protection and access management services (with the exception of infrastructure monitoring that enables them) be left out of the private-sector deal. SFM stands for Station Facility Management, which is a term that can be used after the arrangement is signed.
The Security Directorate can consider two more choices, according to the letter: The SFM is responsible for “the provision and repair of defense facilities and resources, as well as the cost of manpower, like (RPF 50 percent Government Railway Police)” in one of them.
The government consented in October 2019 to form a committee to draught a plan for handing over the operations of 150 trains and 50 railway stations to private companies. In a letter to then-railway board chairman VK Yadav, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant suggested that an empowered committee be created to “push the process” in a time-bound manner.
The ministry announced in September that the bidding process for eight railway stations, including Nagpur, Gwalior, Amritsar, Sabarmati, Nellore, Puducherry, Dehradun, and Tirupati, had begun. “Private developers have shown concern, and RFQ applications for all 8 stations have been submitted as a result,” the ministry said at the time.
Redevelopment work at Gandhinagar and Habibganj has already begun, and contracts for the redevelopment of Anand Vihar (Northern Railway), Bijwasan (Northern Railway), and Chandigarh (Northern Railway) railway stations have been issued. Indian Railways also intends to add private trains on its network in stages, with the first dozen expected to begin service in the fiscal year 2023-24 and the remaining 151 by 2027
