DFCCIL marks 19th Foundation Day, big milestones reached in freight infra of India
NEW DELHI: Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd. (DFCCIL) celebrated its 19th Foundation Day in New Delhi, marking nearly two decades of path-breaking work in India’s rail freight infrastructure.
The virtual event was blessed with the presence of Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting, Electronics and Information Technology, and V. Somanna and Ravneet Singh Bittu, Ministers of State for Railways.
All the dignitaries comprised Railway Board Chairman and CEO Satish Kumar, DFCCIL Managing Director Praveen Kumar, and other important officials from the Railway Board, CPSEs, and stakeholders.
The Dedicated Freight Corridors of DFCCIL are crucial in transforming the transportation ecosystem in India. It includes the 1,337-km Eastern Corridor from Ludhiana in Punjab to Sonnagar in Bihar and the 1,506-km Western Corridor from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to JNPT Port in Navi Mumbai that connects the hinterlands of India with consumer markets and the world.
The corridors are run through high-tech OCCs established at Prayagraj and Ahmedabad.
DFCCIL stretches through seven states, which are Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Maharashtra. Along with these, it has affected almost all industries on its route; hence, boosting the economies of respective regions and offering job opportunities for youth.
By 2024, DFCCIL had crossed a major milestone, as more than 96 percent of its projects had been commissioned and put into operation. At a time when DFCCIL would just be transitioning from construction to full-scale operations, it was already handling over 13 percent of the freight load of Indian Railways while covering only 4 percent of the rail network. The daily movement of more than 350 trains across its network is emblematic of DFCCIL’s operational growth.
During the fiscal year 2024-25, the average GTKMs per day recorded by DFCCIL stood at 496.3 million, registering a whopping 80 percent growth over the previous year. It carried a record 107,000 million GTKMs for the calendar year, and the NTKMs volume has more than doubled, with traffic earnings expected to be significantly higher than in the record years.
