Budget 2026-27: FM announces seven new bullet train corridors

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced seven new bullet train corridors will be set up in her budget 2026-27 speech.

“High speed rail corridors will be developed between Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Chennai, Chennai- Bengaluru, Delhi-Varanasi, and Varanasi-Siliguri,” the finance minister said. She also announced setting up the East West Dedicated Freight Corridor. This will run from Dankuni (Odisha) to Surat (Gujarat).

While the Eastern Dedicated Freight corridor from Ludhiana to Sonnagar (1337 Km) is complete, the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) from Jawaharlal Nehru Port Terminal (JNPT) to Dadri (1506 Km) is nearing completion.


The newly announced high speed rail corridors build upon the experience of the under construction Delhi-Mumbai corridor. Officials say while the Delhi-Mumbai corridor is built in partnership with Japanese counterparts, the new routes are expected to have higher levels of indigenisation.

India is evaluating the use of E5 variants of Japanese-made bullet trains for trials and then buy the newest E10 variant ones for full blown commercial operations. This also means E10 trains will be introduced simultaneously in India and Japan, around 2030, officials had told ET.

The country has already started work on a home-built bullet train that will exceed 250 kilometres per hour (kmph). These are being built on the Vande Bharat platform that can already clock a maximum speed of 220 kmph.

Vande Bharat trains were introduced in February 2019. The first trainset achieved a maximum speed of 160 kmph with subsequent iterations getting faster. Sleeper variants of Vande Bharat trains are have already rolled out. Frequent-stop, metro-type Vande Bharat services are also being developed.