Plans afoot to take bullet train project to UP and Bihar, will make it possible to travel between Delhi and Patna in 4.5 hours: Railways Minister

Travel between Delhi and Lucknow will be reduced to two hours and that between the national capital and Patna to 4.5 hours in the proposed bullet train project covering major cities in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Railway Minister Ashwani Vaishnaw said on Monday.

Travel between Delhi and Lucknow will be reduced to two hours and that between the national capital and Patna to 4.5 hours in the proposed bullet train project covering major cities in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Railway Minister Ashwani Vaishnaw said on Monday. Speaking during the inauguration of newly converted and electrified broad-gauge rail line on the Nepalganj Road-Nanpara-Bahraich section, Vaishnaw said that the proposed bullet train corridor will include Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi and Patna and connect these sprawling cities to Delhi.

He said the proposed project will drastically cut travel time between the national capital and major cities of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The minister said under the project, the estimated travel time between Delhi and Agra (200 km) will be 58 minutes .

Time to reach Kanpur from Delhi (455 km) will be 1 hour 50 minutes; the route to Lucknow (495 km) will be 2 hours 12 minutes and it will take three hours to reach Prayagraj (750 km) from the national capital. The proposed bullet train will take about 3 hours 33 minutes to reach Varanasi from Delhi (945 km) and 4.5 hours (1,170 km) to reach Patna.

"If the project materialises, it will be the next phase bullet train corridor in the country after the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor and the first to connect the National Capital with many cities of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar," Vaisnaw said. The proposed corridor will not only provide a huge relief to lakhs of daily passengers but is also expected to boost tourism, business and economic activity across the Delhi-UP-Bihar belt, especially in religious tourism hubs like Agra, Prayagraj, Varanasi, Gorakhpur and Patna.

Currently, the highest design speed in the Indian railway network is around 180 kmph, achieved by semi-high-speed services such as Vande Bharat. Against this, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (MAHSR) Project has a design speed of 350 kmph and an operational speed of 320 kmph. It is one of the most extensive rail infrastructure programmes undertaken in India, and will connect Mumbai and Ahmedabad in about 1 hour 58 minutes. The first high-speed rail service in the country is expected to commence in August 2027 and the first section to be opened will be from Surat to Vapi.

Earlier in the day, Vaishnaw said that India will develop another one lakh semiconductor engineers under the second phase of its semiconductor programme, as the government seeks to strengthen the country's talent pool and build a complete semiconductor ecosystem. Speaking after the launch of Semicon 2.0, the minister said the initiative will focus not only on semiconductor manufacturing but also on developing talent, chip design, equipment, materials, advanced packaging and research and development.

"Now we have taken a target of one lakh more engineers to be developed," Vaishnaw said, adding that the move assumes importance as the global semiconductor industry is expected to face a shortage of about one million workers by 2032. (ANI)