Prime Minister Modi To Dedicate Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay-Bhaupur Freight Corridor To The Nation On 18 December

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will dedicate the 402-km-long Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay-Bhaupur freight corridor to the nation on 18 December, along with a new Vande Bharat Express from Varanasi to New Delhi.

Constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 10,903 crore, this section is a crucial link for the 1,337 km long Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), which has now been completed.

Covering Chandauli, Mirzapur, Prayagraj, Kaushambi, Fatehpur, Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, this section is operational now playing a vital role in improving punctuality of passenger trains in Prayagraj division, due to shifting of goods trains on DFC track.

The Eastern DFC has capacity to run goods trains at 100 kmph. According to the Indian Railways, the corridor can also be used with the availability of margin for running of more coaching trains as per the public demand.

The EDFC also ensures the fast movement of coal rakes, thereby reducing logistic cost of power houses.

One of the key infrastructure projects, the 1,337-km EDFC from Punjab to Bihar — has achieved completion ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

The project is is being commissioned and operations are on the full swing. "The first section of EDFC was inaugurated in December 2020. Three years later, the entire corridor is completed now," DFCC maintains.

Thermal power plants in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, and partly Rajasthan will benefit from the corridor as it will largely cater to coal traffic.

The Eastern DFC is a broad gauge freight corridor in India. The railway will run between Ludhiana in Punjab and Dankuni (near Kolkata) in West Bengal via Meerut and Khurja in Uttar Pradesh.

It is mostly with double tracks and fully electrified, but the section from Ludhiana to Khurja (365 km) will be single-line electrified due to lack of space.

This corridor is having a 46 km branch line which is joining Khurja (Bulandshahr district) on the Eastern DFC, with Dadri (Gautam Buddha Nagar district) on the Western DFC.