South Central Railway (SCR) is slated to complete about 400 km of electrification by next month-end, but it still leaves 1,314 km of railway lines to be electrified in the Telugu States of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Another 300 km of dense traffic corridor is to have double lines within March-end and here too, 2,670 km is just single line requiring lot of more effort to double or even triple the lines — which is just 54 km, of the total 6,382 km of railway lines in these two States.
General Manager Gajanan Mallya, in a recent media interaction, to announce the details of the ‘Pink Book’ — indicating the precise allocations made for each zone, explained that a huge outlay of over ₹ 7,222 crore has been allotted for electrification, doubling, tripling and other projects in TS ₹2,240 crore and AP ₹5,812 crore, but as is evident, the infrastructure gaps are too wide to bring railway lines to increase the speeds of trains substantially or even introduce more trains in the immediate future.
Senior railway officials are quite clear that introducing any new services will happen only after the current ongoing projects are completed, yet it will be quite revealing to know the current state of affairs to put things in perspective. The double railway lines in TS and AP are to the tune of 659 km of the 1,828 km and 1,430 km - 2,987 km, respectively. If one takes the non-electrified sections, it is to the tune of 800 km in TS and 582 km in AP, as per the latest official record.
If we take the division wise electrification — the super busy Secunderabad division touching Balharshah, Kazipet, Wadi, Jagityal has about 1,094 km of 2,824 km electrified; Vijayawada division touching Visakhapatnam, Gudur and others has 783 km of 2,048 km electrified; Guntakal division touching Tirupati, Nandyal, Bellary has electrified 1,086 km out of 2,452 km; Guntur division has 595 km of 888 km electrified and Hyderabad division got 68 out of 135 km electrified.
It also has to be highlighted that much more needs to be done to improve the rail infrastructure in Maharashtra where over 1,000 km is yet to be electrified and 981 km of the 1,100 km is single line. Parts of Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh too come under SCR, but in a limited way in comparison.
