Mumbai, Sep 20 (PTI) Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday that the upcoming 508-km Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Corridor will not be used to operate Vande Bharat trains.
While talking
to mediapersons in Thane (Maharashtra) on the occasion of the breakthrough of a portion of 21-km long tunnel for high-speed corridor, Vaishnaw said that bullet train and Vande Bharat trains operate on two different platforms.
Vaishnaw's statement dismissed media reports which earlier said that the Vande Bharat train with 250 kmph running capacity which the Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) has been asked to develop will run on Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor.
In September 2024, the Ministry asked BEML to develop the first high-speed Vande Bharat train indigenously.
Since then experts and a section of media speculated that the train will be made to run on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail Corridor as there is no other section across the rail network in the country whose track and signalling system support a high speed train with 250 kmph running capacity.
Vaishnaw also said that based on the decisions taken by the two governments -India and Japan - world's latest train E-10 will be imported to India and it will run on this corridor.
"A team from Japan, along with the Vice Minister, was in Delhi to review the project. He expressed happiness after reviewing the progress of the project," Viashnaw said.
When asked to respond to the complaints of some residents whose houses developed cracks due to tunnel work, Vaishnaw said that a detailed survey with experts from IIT was done to work on technology upgradation.
Besides, the minister added that another team has done a survey of those 78 houses where cracks have developed and suggested many precautions to be taken for residences situated in the 30 meter of the radius of the project.
"I have asked the team to formulate a standard document so that people residing in the tunnel vicinity should have a clear knowledge of those precautions during house construction," the Railway Minister stated.
He added, "The standard document will be given to the state governments of Maharashtra and Gujarat to get their approval." PTI JP AMJ
AMJ
