Prior to the 2014 general election, the two major national parties pledged to introduce high-speed rail. The INC pledged to connect all of India's million-plus cities by high-speed rail, whereas BJP, which won the election, promised to build the "Diamond Quadrilateral" project, which would connect the cities of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai via high-speed rail. This project was approved as a priority for the new government in the incoming president's speech. Construction of one kilometer of high speed railway track will cost - which is 10-14 times higher than the cost of construction of standard railway. India's Union Council of Ministers passed the proposal of Japan to build India's first high-speed railway on 10 December 2015. The planned rail will run approximately between Mumbai and the western city ofAhmedabad at a top speed of. Under this proposal, the construction began in 2017 and is expected to be completed in the year 2022. The estimated cost of this project is and is financed by a low-interest loan from Japan. Operation is officially targeted to begin in 2023, but India has announced intentions to attempt to bring the line into operation one year earlier. It will transport the passengers from Ahmedabad to Mumbai in just 3 hours and its ticket fare will be cheaper than air planes i.e. ₹2500-₹3000.
Current status
As of july 2020, NHSRCL has floated almosts 60 % of tenders for civil works,and almost 60 % of land is aquared for the first Mumbai-Ahmadabad corridor and the dedline of the project is Dec 2023. The NationalHeigh Speed Rail Corperation Limited,the implimenting body of the project has planed 7 routes which are Delhi to Varanasi via Noida, Agra and Lucknow; Varanasi to Howrah via Patna; Delhi to Ahmedabad via Jaipur and Udaipur; Delhi to Amritsar via Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Jalandhar; Mumbai to Nagpur via Nasik; Mumbai to Hyderabad via Pune and Chennai to Mysore via Bangalore. According to reports, the NHAI will soon acquire land to lay tracks for high-speed trains along greenfield expressways for integrated development of the rail transport network in the country. to expedite the project, the Indian Railways along with the National Highways Authority of India will begin the process of acquiring additional land. The decision to acquire additional land was taken during a recent meeting of a group of infrastructure ministers led by Union Minister Nitin Gadkari.During the infra sector group meeting, it was decided that the NHAI will take over land acquisition and a 4-member committee was constituted to take this process forward. The four-member task force will work out the modalities for acquiring land and sharing the cost. It may be noted that the Indian Railways is in the process of preparing the blueprint of 7 high-speed rail routes in the country. As per reports, The railway board has also written to the NHAI and given details of seven high-speed rail corridors for running bullet trains for which the detailed project reports are being prepared. NHAI has been asked to depute a nodal officer for this purpose for better integration of the mammoth planning exercise.Railways plans to run bullet trains on 7 important new routes of the country.
