Railways land handed over to RLDA for commercial use still undeveloped, says Parliamentary panel

NEW DELHI: The Public Accounts Committee of the Lok Sabha has found that the Railway Land Development Authority failed in its objective to develop railways land for commercial use due to various reasons.

In its report presented to the Lok Sabha, the committee said that it reviewed 17 of the 49 sites entrusted to the Railway Land Development Authority (RLDA) by the Indian Railways in 2007 and noted that none of these were developed till 2017.

It added that only 40 of the 49 sites are commercially viable. The committee — chaired by Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury — selected the subject “Development of Railway Land for Commercial use by Rail Land Development Authority”, which was based on the Comptroller of Auditor General’s (CAG) report laid in the Lok Sabha on July 20, 2018.

According to the report, the Indian Railways has 43,000 hectares of vacant land, of which it entrusted 49 sites to the RLDA from 2007 to 2017 for commercial development to generate revenue.

“The committee observed that the audit reviewed the development of 17 sites, which were entrusted to the RLDA in 2007 when it was constituted and found that none of these sites had been developed,” the report stated.

“Audit findings revealed that there were delays in the engagement of consultants, in the submission of reports by the consultants, taking permission from state governments for change of land use plan, deficiencies in entrustment of land to RLDA by the concerned zonal railways by providing encumbered land, identifying wrong site or sites with incomplete papers etc which resulted in non-development of these sites of 166.996 acres,” it said.

The committee also found that, since being set up, while the RLDA incurred an expenditure of Rs 102.29 crore towards establishment, consultancy charges and advertisement, etc from 2006-07 to 2016-17, it only earned Rs 67.97 crore from the development of Multi-Functional Complexes (MFCs) at railway stations, which was not part of the earnings from commercial development of the

entrusted lands.