Five years on, Karnataka finally moves to acquire land for rail coach factory

The coach factory at Kolar was first proposed in 2012. The project cost has risen from ₹1,460 crore to around ₹2,000 crore. The new factory will be crucial to ensure production of modern LHB coaches.

In the Railways Budget presented in 2012, the UPA government had announced the construction of a rail coach factory in Kolar district. Even though a foundation stone was laid for the project in March 2014, there was little movement on it. On January 24, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah promised to provide land for the project in the next two-and-half months.

When the project was originally announced, the State Government was to bear half of the construction expenses and provide the land. The project requires 1,123 acres of land; of this, nearly 250 acres have to be acquired from farmers, while the remainder is government property. The estimated project cost has gone up from ₹1,460 crore to around ₹2,000 crore.

The Times of India reported that Kolar MP KH Muniyappa recently cautioned Siddaramaiah that the Centre could shift the project to another state, if it was not executed soon. The proposed coach factory will be the fourth in the country after similar facilities at Chennai, Kapurthala and Raebareli. The proposed factory and auxiliary units that will emerge around it will generate about 10,000 jobs.

The proposed coach factory is imperative given the Railways’ plan to build the newer Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches in the coming years. LHB coaches have safety features such as advanced couplers that reduce the chances of it getting toppled; these coaches also have longer life spans. Railways officials recently told The Asian Age that the Railways will gradually increase the production of LHB coaches from 1,697 in 2016-17 to 3,025 in 2018-19, while the manufacturing of the existing “conventional” coaches will stop in 2017-18.