RITES Bags Rs 475 Crore Railway Electrification Contract

RITES Limited has announced that it has been awarded a contract worth Rs 475 crore for electrification works of various arms of the Indian Railways.

RITES Limited, a Public Sector Enterprise and a leading player in the transport consultancy and engineering sector in India has announced that it has been awarded a contract worth Rs 475 crore for electrification works of various arms of the Indian Railways.

According to the firm, the turnkey contract covers four sections including Mavli-Bari Sadri for 82 Route Kilometer (RKM); Udaipur City-Himmatnagar for 210 RKM; Bhatinda-Firozpur for 81 RKM; and Gulbarga-Bidar for 110 RKM of North-Western Railway, Northern Railway and South Central Railway.

RITES Chairman and Managing Director Rajeev Mehrotra said “these important additions to our order book will be executed on priority as these are part of the key plan of railways for complete electrification.”

The firm has confirmed that it will now sign agreements with the concerned railway departments to begin work on the projects.

In June, RITES announced that it was tendering for the deployment of solar projects worth 400 MW on the vacant lands owned by the Indian Railways. It is believed that the tender quantity might fall under the tender issued in April for setting up of 1 GW of solar PV projects on vacant railways land.

Prior to that the firm had announced that its subsidiary Railway Energy Management Company Ltd (REMCL) had secured its largest mandate from Indian Railways for tendering, installation, supervision and managing power supply for three GW solar energy installations. This project is to be divided into three phases of one gigawatt (GW) each, with the first and third phases of 1 GW each on a PPP (public-private partnership) basis under the design, build, finance, operate and transfer model. The second phase of the project (1 GW) will be on the ownership model of REMCL, making it eligible for capital subsidy under the CPSE investment scheme.

In November 2019, Union Minister Piyush Goyal had informed that a target has been set for full electrification of Indian Railways within the next four years.

“Railways is continuously increasing electrification for a better, pollution-free future. The target of electrification of the entire railway in the next 3-4 years has been set, making it the world’s first carbon emission-free railway, along with that the railways are producing solar energy for their power needs,” the minister had tweeted.