In reference to the Union budget 2021-22, The panelists mostly felt that the budget 2021-22 was extremely progressive and path breaking with a lot of transparency.

In reference to the TCAS project and Speed Up gradation of Railways, Railways now has one its own advanced in degenous signalling system called TCAS (Train Collision Avoidance System) locally developed by RDSO and some firms are capable of rolling out TCAS system. Further, Railways have capability of producing world class train-sets as seen in Vande Bharat Express. Also the entire Delhi to Howrah route has been sanctioned an additional budget this year to upgrade it to 160 kmph.

The DFCC team is working towards completing the section between Ajmer and Palampur which will be connected to the western ports of Kandla and Mundra soon. Further the timelines set to complete the entire Dedicated Freight Corridors of East and West that is up to Son nagar in Eastern sector and up to Mumbai in Western sector is by June 2022.

The Bangalore Suburban Project is going to be built under Make in India initiative of the Central Government and Indian Railways has come forward to allow the construction in its Right of Way. So, Bangalore is going to get a Metro like system, 150 kms long with the Railways land being offered free of cost and railways participating 20% equity and 50% loan guarantee.

The Building Lean Digital Rolling Stock Maintenance Eco system model which aims to transform the rolling stock management and rolling stock maintenance is a well designed and structured framework which aims to exploit full potential of technologies under Industry 4.0 & Digital Revolution. It provides a canvas where all such digital initiative swhich are being undertaken under Digital revolution – Industry 4.0 are aligned with the support of lean management together with the overall objective of transforming rolling stock management.

In reference to the Mechanised Construction on Freight Corridors, Eastern Corridor is divided in the several part swhich is approx 1800 kms. To complete this work the timeline given was very tight so to complete all these works in time, DFCC team utilized the automated mechanisation because by manual means it was not possible. The machine which they adopted for track laying was a state-of-the-art world class machine. It is 45 meter long and it is completely mechanised with flow of Materials ,Sleepers and laying of Rails. It is working at the speed of 10 sleepers per minute and it is capable of handling 260 meter long rails.

In reference to the RFID tagging of coaches and wagons over the Indian Railways, It is a key element for digitizationas far as railways is concerned. RFID is an integral element of an AIDC project (Automatic Identification and Data Collection). The RFID project is also a key element in RAMS initiative of Indian Railways which is really about improving the Reliability, Availability, Maintainability etc. of the rolling stock.

In reference to the100% electrification of Broad Gauge routes over Indian Railway by 2023 and becoming a Green Railway by 2030, around 43,000 route kms have been electrified and they have more than 68,000 km railway networking place. So that means another 25,000 route kms railway network is to be electrified in the next 3 years. So there is big momentum in the rate of approx 7000 – 8000 route kms per year.

As far as Indigenization of Signalling & Telecommunication systems concerned , there has been a lot of in digenisation already done. In fact most of the signalling systems like Point Machines, Relays and Conventional signalling systems have been manufactured in India only. Even the computer based Electronic Inter locking, the manufacturers have now started manufacturing in India.