@Atmavik: Because people generally are unable to read, think for themselves and cannot count. Reporters invariably copy and paste from other sources so that news reports from the NE look identical from the report filed by the stringer from the Assam Sentinel. The local newspapers in Hindi, Kannada etc do a far better job.
As Modi said in his parliament speech a few days ago, that had his government followed the Congress plan of railway electrification it would have taken 80 years to electrify the network. Now we are close to 94% electrified and by next year full electrification will happen with a tremendous saving in HS(high speed) diesel. The national newspapers do not have reporters who understand the network and will send nobody to cover projects periodically. Take NE, or Char Dham railway project(at 60% completion and with 8/14 tunnels done, 104 km of a 135 km project is inside a tunnel, amazing) you will see the national newspapers have no reports since April 2023 or October 2023.
The EDFC is complete as of November 2023, that is a truncated EDFC, since LA was not done on time in WB and Jharkhand. Still using 1337km of this double lined EDFC(single lined in Punjab due to land acquisition problems), coal from mines in Jharkhand takes 20 hours to reach even power stations in Punjab via EDFC. Power stations do not have to maintain massive buffer stocks of coal. In 2022 there was a crisis with heavy power demand and power stations almost ran out of coal, none of this will happen anymore as the EDFC is operational.
Mamata and Soren have screwed the EDFC in their states by being slow with LA and now Mamta says LA is complete. But the record is that even in 2019, only 70% of the land was acquired in WB and only 60% handed over to DFCCIL by WB govt. 41 railway projects are at a standstill in WB due to LA state subject. The EDFC iy=tself now no longer will go to Dankuni as envisioned but stop at Andal as soon as it enters the WB border near Durgapur. After that IR is indeed quadrupled and freight will share tracks with passenger trains and local MEMUs.
The WDFC is operational from Dadri to Sanand(western outskirts of Ahmedabad) and thus to all the Gujarat ports. Containers are taking 18-24 hours to reach Gujarat ports from Delhi NCR and the hinterland of Ludhiana and even UP via EDFC and WDFC. This is a significant reduction in time from the 72 hours before.
Anyday now Sanand to Makarpura (Vadodara) 138km will be linked and when that happens freight from NCR Delhi, UP and so on will also be able to reach Vaitarna MH and then onwards to JNPT in 24-36 hours. From Makarpura to Vaitarna the WDFC is complete and freight is running bypassing Surat and other places. Hazira port also is connected to WDFC(petrochemicals). For further savings in time esp. container traffic which is the most traffic on WDFC, it is imperative that the JNPT to Vaitarna section gets completed ASAP.
The problem has happened in Maharashtra. 109km from Vaitarna to JNPT. Two very bad things happened. The Thackeray brigand family(I have no love lost for the father either a cheap goon) threw a big spanner in the land acquisition. Nothing moved for years when they were running the government. Next Tata Construction completely stopped work on the WDFC and were on the verge of being kicked out and the 109km re-tendered. Then their partners Mitsui(on the WDFC all Indian companies have to have a Japanese partner on WDFC according to borrowing rules set up by JICA, so JNPT to Vaitarna companies are Tata+Mitsui+IRCON) put pressure and also Tata threatened to lock the project in litigation, seeing all this DFCCIL relented as this would push completion on an important project to 2027. Tata put all its energy into the new parliament building, and now the new international Jewar airport in NOIDA. This is a sh***ty company with crap engineers and only does coolie level engineering like building doors and frames for Airbus where the coolie is told exactly what to do, try talking to their engineers in Steel, any sort of engineering you can pole them in 10 minutes. So the end run of Vaitarna to JNPT is delayed to end of this year according to most people by the two T's Thackeray brigands and Tata Construction. Here is a recent video in 3 parts, drone from Vaitarna to JNPT, do you think WDFC last part will finish in 2024 as announced with a delayed deadline which has been pushed back 4 times? Get depressed:
Part 1 WDFC(very poor progress, Dahisar to Dombivili)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2XQ5-Afubo
Part 2 WDFC Nilje---Panvel--JNPT( very slow and very poor progress)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn7wlP-WdYI
Part 3 : Dahisar to Gujarat(this is almost done, trials are taking place upto Palghar currently and will finish by March 2024 in a few months)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-0IJu-uVQk
But Parts 1&2 ^^^ are the sections of greatest concern.
Videos above are 3 weeks old.