Minister for Railways, Piyush Goyal has informed that the government has no intentions of privatising the Indian Railways. However, many of the onboard services are being allowed to be handled by private players, which the government claims is to make rail passengers gain a better experience. The Minister issued this statement on the floor of the House, in the Rajya Sabha.
The main reason cited by Goyal for this move was that the kind of finance required to operate the railways in the next 10-12 years, about Rs 50 lakh crore, is not available with the government.
The Minister referred to the members of Parliament sending him requests for introduction of new trains and rail routes in their respective states/constituencies. That is when he quoted this figure of Rs 50 lakh core and said it is not possible for the government to raise such huge resources. That is the reason the Railways has decided to throw certain services open to private players to enter and make the investments. The basic railway infrastructure will be owned by Indian Railways the Minister reiterated.
The government has offered certain trains to be run by private parties on a revenue sharing basis. The complete operations of the train will be in the hands of the private party, which means, the housekeeping, providing bedding and other amenities and serving food to the passengers. The charges to be collected from the passengers for these will be shared between the Railways and the private operator. This has been started with only select trains so far. Depending on the learnings from these, it may be expanded to other trains/routes.