RailEnquiry

KOLKATA: Chief minister Mamata Banerjee may have highlighted in Haldia on Tuesday how she used the railways to attract investment to the state but at least one of her pet projects - an automobile hub at Shalimar in Howrah - for which she laid the foundation stone in November, 2009, has found no takers. In fact, none of the other hubs planned in Siliguri, Guwahati, Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Kerala and Delhi attracted investors.While laying the foundation stone at Shalimar, Mamata had said that the railways expected to earn Rs 1,000 crore from the 10 automobile hubs across the country. The idea was to lease out railway land to automobile manufacturers, ancillary units or registered freight train operators for seven years. The lessee was to create necessary infrastructure on the land provided and pay licence fee to the railways. The hubs would be places where the new vehicles would be parked till they were transported to dealers."The project was a big failure. Cars used to reach Shalimar by rail even before Mamata announced the project. Even today, they reach Shalimar but no additional infrastructure has come up. The cars are simply driven out of the containers and sent to dealers as was the case before November, 2009. Neither has there been any significant rise in the volume of vehicles moving to Shalimar by rail," a railway official from Delhi said.

To create a 4.5-acre space for the hub, some old sheds next to the Shalimar railway station were flattened and the land was concretized. Mamata had hoped that these hubs, at least the ones in Shalimar and Siliguri, would generate employment. What she hadn't bargained for was the problems faced by automobile manufacturers in moving vehicles by rail. As far as the railways were concerned, the idea was to increase its modal share in the transportation of automobiles.

"The Indian automobile industry was growing phenomenally at that time and the railways wanted a share of the pie. Both industry and the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers had other views on the matter though. They indicated that railway freight for transportation of automobiles would have to be brought down if the share was to increase. Industry calculated that it is cheaper to transport cars by road than by rail. Had it been the other way round, the hubs may have materialized.

Industry had demanded a 15-20% discount and other incentives that the railways could not provide," the official added.