India, Japan commit cooperation on rail projects

New Delhi: Japan, a pioneer in bullet train operations, today committed to “work closely” with the Indian government in its proposed high speed projects in the country.

An extensive deliberation was held in this regard between visiting Japanese Minister for Land Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Takeshi Maeda and Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi, according to railway sources.[caption id=“attachment_180490” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Union Minister for Railways, Dinesh Trivedi. Image courtesy PIB”]  [/caption]

Trivedi is understood to have said that there is an increasing demand for high speed trains in the country in view of its growing economy as well as the demand from a larger section which aspires such service.

The Japanese minister is believed to have assured his country’s support and expressed desire to work closely with India which has identified six high speed corridors in the country, sources said.

More from Economy

Narendra Modi gets a stellar economic advisory panel but will he listen to it in an election year? Demonetisation: RBI will take time to count scrapped currency note deposits, says Arun Jaitley

Maede led a delegation which included senior deputy DG of Japan’s Railway Bureau Akhihiko Tamura, president, East Japan Railway Company Satoshi Seino, chairman of Kawasaki Heavy Industry Tadaharu Ohashi and Ambassador of Japan to India Akitaka Saiki among others.

The meeting was also attended by the Railway Board Members led by its chairman Vinay Mittal.

Japan’s External Trade Organisation and Oriental Consultancy along with Parsons Brinkhoff India has bagged the contract to conduct pre-feasibility study of the Hyderabad-Vijayawada-Chennai corridor, one of the six corridors identified by Indian Railways for high speed train operations.

Railways has already announced to set up a National High Speed Rail Authority (NHSRA), the approval of which is expected to be placed before the Union Cabinet this year.

The other corridors are Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar, Delhi-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi-Patna, Howrah-Haldia and Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Trivandrum.

Japan is schedule to make a detailed presentation about high speed train operations in New Delhi on Friday.

There had been efforts from both sides in last one year in the direction of High Speed Train System.

A delegation led by DG for International Affairs of Japan Ryuhei Maeda had visited Delhi in October 2011 and held interaction with Trivedi and Railway Board officers.

This was followed by a visit of Indian Railway officers to Japan to have first hand understanding of Shikansen system.