IPRCL conducts maiden AGM; aims to enhance port connectivity and evacuation
Dec 22, 2016: Indian Port Rail Corporation Limited (IPRCL), a joint venture between the major ports under the Ministry of Shipping and Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) held its first Annual General Meeting (AGM) in New Delhi recently. The company, registered on July 10, 2015 as a Public Limited Company under the Companies Act, 2013, was formed with the objective to provide efficient rail evacuation systems to major ports and thereby enhance their capacity and throughput.
The AGM was chaired by Rajive Kumar, Secretary, Ministry of Shipping and attended by Anoop Kumar Agrawal, Managing Director, IPRCL and Chairman/Representatives of 11 major ports and RVNL.
In the coming years, IPRCL, as a dedicated SPV will continue to develop railways as a mode of transport in the port sector and will pave the way for seamless integration of port–railway system with the Indian Railways network. Sagarmala, the flagship programme of Ministry of Shipping has four pillars namely port modernisation, port connectivity and evacuation, port led industrialisation and coastal community development. IPRCL will strengthen the second pillar of port connectivity and evacuation through its various dedicated port connectivity projects. The Salegoan-Pardip dedicated freight corridor model will be replicated in future in other port connectivity projects.
Some of the key accomplishments of IPRCL during the first year of its operation were:
1) During the financial year 2015-16, 20 railway projects were taken up across eight Major Ports. Out of this 11 works with total project cost of Rs 7636.15 crores were for preparation of feasibility and Detailed Project Report (DPR) and nine works with total project cost of Rs 643.77 crores were for project execution.
2) IPRCL has completed pre-feasibility study of a heavy haul rail corridor from Ib Valley-Talcher to Paradip and Dhamra to evacuate coal mines of Mahanadi Coal Ltd (MCL) to the ports for shipping them to the southern states of India through the coastal route. On the above mentioned corridor IPRCL is taking up the third and fourth line from Salegoan to Paradip that will be dedicated to freight. The development of this project will give a major fillip to the Government’s initiative to promote multi-modal logistics and coastal shipping.
3) The company has already started rail infrastructure modernization in Kolkata, Vishakhapatnam, Chennai, Tuticorin and New Mangalore ports. Rail infrastructure expansion and modernisation works are likely to commence from April 2017 in Kandla and JNPT ports and in Haldia Dock Complex (HDC).
4) The company has also taken up the task of preparation of DPR for rail and road connectivity of the proposed major port at Colachel (Enayam) in Tamil Nadu.
