Title - Railways fast-tracks Rs 1000-crore land monetisation plan

NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways is fast-tracking its land monetisation plans of generating over Rs 1000 crore of revenue from railway land. It has prepared a focused action plan for developing 75 Multi Functional Complexes (MFC) it has identified as potential revenue earners. It plans to leverage these sites in the current financial year and the bidding process for which will be initiated in phases.

So far, nine bids have been invited in the current year for developing 43 MFCs across India in stations like Dehradun, Ujjain, Gulbarga, Vijayawada, Amritsar, Amethi and Chandigarh. There has been very good response for the last bidding carried out in Western Railway in which a total of 25 financial bids were received, said the railway ministry statement.

The total present value of the lease premium and annual lease rent received for MFCs at eight stations is Rs. 20.27 crore from these sites. This is much more than the minimum expectation of the Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA), a statutory authority established by the Ministry for this purpose.

RLDA is holding a pre-bid conference at Hyderabad tomorrow to invite bids for commercial development of MFCs at eight stations in regions of tourist and religious significance in the state. These eight complexes will have facilities such as shopping, food stalls or restaurants, book stalls, ATMs, medicines and variety stores, budget hotels and so on.

According to the railways, several leading brands, like Pantaloon, Cafe Coffee Day, Woodland, have evinced interest. However, while MFCs at 26 railway stations have already been developed jointly by IRCON ( Indian Railway Construction Company Limited) and RITES, the Railways' consultancy organisation, they are still waiting for being leased out.