For development of Railway lines network in North Eastern States, 20 major Railway projects consisting of 13 new lines, 2 gauge conversions and 5 doublings having aggregate length of 2624 km at a cost of `52030 crore have been taken up. An expenditure of `21336 crore has been incurred on these projects upto March, 2016. An outlay of `5040 crore has been provided for 2016-17 for these projects and residual liabilities of some completed projects.
Completion of projects depends on many factors such as availability of funds, land acquisition, forestry and wildlife clearances, shifting of services, construction of road over and road under bridges by road maintaining agencies etc. As many of these factors are not within the control of Railways, it is not feasible to fix timelines for all the projects. However, Railways have taken various measures to expedite completion of projects including substantial increase in allocation of funds, prioritization of projects, delegation of powers at field level, inviting the State Governments to participate with Railways for resource mobilization for projects, nomination of nodal officers for improved co-ordination with the State Governments etc.