Delhi to Varanasi in under 3 hours: Second bullet train project worth Rs 8400 crores to be fast tracked by Narendra Modi government!

The train, which will connect the national capital and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha constituency, will also pass through Lucknow and the project is said to be fast tracked ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in 2017.

Published: June 20, 2016 2:03 PM IST

By India.com News Desk

Delhi to Varanasi in under 3 hours: Second bullet train project worth Rs 8400 crores to be fast tracked by Narendra Modi government!

New Delhi, June 20: India is on its way to get its second bullet train. After the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor, another project is under process to connect New Delhi and Varanasi by a bullet train and reduce the travel time to barely two hours and 40 minutes! The train will take a little bit under three hours to cover an impossible distance of 782 Kms! The train, which will connect the national capital and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency, will also pass through Lucknow and the project is said to be fast tracked ahead of the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections in 2017.

No wonder then that the Delhi-Varanasi stretch has been taken on as the top priority project by the Railways Ministry. According to a report by the Times of India, this is the Railways most important project, after the Mumbai-Ahmedabad stretch was accelerated by tying up funds with Japan and setting up of the High Speed Rail Corporation. The project’s fast tracking is a strategy by the BJP to present a pro-development outlook, ahead of the polls. The stretch will pass though Aligarh, Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow and Sultanpur, said TOI. ALSO READ: First bullet train to run in India by 2023, says Suresh Prabh

A Spanish firm is conducting a survey to ascertain the feasibility of the project and it is likely to submit its report in November. The train will reduce travel time between Delhi and Lucknow (506 Kms) to a measly 1 hour 45 minutes, while the travel time between Delhi and Kolkata will be reduced to just 4 hours 56 minutes ( to cross 1,513 Kms). The preliminary cost of the project has been projected to be a whopping Rs. 43,000 for just the Delhi-Varanasi stretch. For the full line from Delhi to Kolkata, the estimated cost is said to be Rs. 84,000 crore. However, the final cost can only be ascertained definitively after the survey report comes in.

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