2020 deadline to redevelop 10 railway stations with airport-like amenities

NEW DELHI: The government has set a 2020 deadline to redevelop 10 railway stations into world classsmart facilities with airport-like amenities at a cost of Rs 5,000 crore. The redevelopment of stations will be carried out under a self-financing model through land monetisation by state-run NBCC.

The stations selected for the project are Delhi Sarai Rohilla, Lucknow, Gomti Nagar, Kota, Tirupati, Nellore, Ernakulam, Puducherry, Madgaon and Thane.

“The redevelopment work will start at a few stations by December-end or early next year. The concept designs are already being worked out,” NBCC chairman AK Mittal told ET. “We're targeting the completion in another two to two-and-a-half years. The monetisation would be done through commercial exploitation of the land that railway provides.”


NBCC in the first phase would redevelop core infrastructure such as platform, lounges, ticketing counters, parking and other passenger amenities, besides building separate arrival and departure terminals on the lines of airports.

Against this, the company would get commercial exploitation rights of the land under these stations for 45 years. It can build or lease land to hotels, malls, multiplexes and corporates, or even develop it for residential purpose.

The corporation is in talks with the railways to increase the lease period to make the projects more viable. A memorandum of understanding has been signed between the Rail Land Development Authority and NBCC for redevelopment of the stations.

Rail minister Piyush Goyal had recently said that the NBCC model of redevelopment would be standardised and implemented for other station development projects as well. Mittal said the company would take more stations for redevelopment from the railways only after it delivered the first batch of 10.

NBCC has already implemented a similar model of redevelopment in Delhi’s New Moti Bagh (Chanakyapuri), where a housing project for top bureaucrats was developed at a cost of Rs 1,700 crore after selling a small piece of the land to Leela Palace Hotels.

The company is undertaking redevelopment of other government-owned colonies in Delhi, including East Kidwai Nagar, Nauroji Nagar and Sarojini Nagar on a similar model.

The Indian Railways has lined up 400 stations for redevelopment on a public-private-partnership basis. The organisation is currently in the process of bidding out stations to private companies for redevelopment.