The National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) has completed 100 per cent land acquisition for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Rail Corridor, popularly known as the bullet train project, across Gujarat, Maharashtra and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.
Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also shared the status of land acquisition on X, saying the entire 1389.49 hectares of land required for the project has been acquired. The high-speed rail line is being built between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
The NHSRCL, in a release, said that all civil contracts for the project were awarded for Gujarat and Maharashtra, while 120.4 km of girders had been launched and 271 km of pier casting completed.
“The laying of the first reinforced concrete (RC) track bed for the MAHSR corridor track system, as used in Japanese Shinkansen, has started in Surat and Anand. This is for the first time the J-slab ballastless track system is being used in India,” the release stated.
The NHSRCL said it has achieved a remarkable milestone with the completion of the first mountain tunnel 350 metres long and 12.6 metres in diameter located near Zaroli village in the Valsad district of Gujarat in just 10 months.
The first steel bridge, spanning 70 meters and weighing 673 MT, was erected across NH 53 in Surat, and 16 such bridges out of 28 are in various stages of fabrication, it said.
The bridge construction has been completed on six rivers out of 24 on the MAHSR corridor, at Par (Valsad district), Purna (Navsari district), Mindhola (Navsari district), Ambika (Navsari district), Auranga (Valsad district) and Venganiya (Navsari district), the release stated.
The work on the Narmada, Tapti, Mahi and Sabarmati rivers is underway, it added.
As per the release, noise barriers are being erected on either side of the viaduct to mitigate the noise generated by the train and civil structures during operations.
Work has started for India’s first 7 km undersea rail tunnel, which is a part of the 21 km-long tunnel between the Bandra Kurla Complex and Shilphata in Maharashtra, and excavation works for the construction of Mumbai HSR station has begun, it said.
HSR stations in Gujarat’s Vapi, Bilimora, Surat, Bharuch, Anand, Vadodara, Ahmedabad and Sabarmati are in various stages of construction, the NHSRCL said.
The high-speed rail line is being built using Japan’s Shinkansen technology, and the project aims to create a high-frequency mass transportation system.
The project has been funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) with a soft loan of Rs 88,000 crore from Japan.
The Rs 1.10 lakh crore project was expected to be completed by 2022 but faced hurdles in land acquisition. The government has set a target to run the first phase of the bullet train between Surat and Bilimora in south Gujarat by 2026.