Image: IANS
NEW DELHI: Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in recent reports, flagged how railways failed to boost its non-fare revenue despite holding vast stretches of vacant land and how dues amounting to Rs 4,087 crore from 269 private siding owners remained unrecovered by different zones till March 2023, pointing to weak monitoring and enforcement mechanisms.CAG audit focussed on two activities of RLDA, the railway entity for development of its surplus land for commercial use and revenue generation, commercial development of vacant railway land and construction of multi-functional complexes (MFC), from 2018-19 to 2022-23. It found that as of March 2023, railways owned 4.88 lakh hectares of land, of which 62,740 hectares was lying vacant, with only 997.8 hectares (1.6%) having been entrusted to RLDA. During this period, the Railway Board had received 188 proposals for 657 hectares, and it entrusted 59 of the 188 proposals to RLDA, following which RLDA awarded 35 sites to developers.It found that despite availability of such quantum of land, RLDA, as of March 2023, could award only 8.8% (87.76 hectares) of land entrusted to it for development. It noticed that several sites were entrusted to RLDA despite unresolved land title issues, encroachments and other encumbrances, resulting in non-monetisation of such sites. It identified systemic and operational issues that had adversely affected timely monetisation of railway land and realisation of revenue.It observed that Railway Board, while processing proposals for entrustment of land to RLDA, should have ensured that the land parcels were free from encroachments and other encumbrances, noting that weak inter-agency coordination in Indian Railways had contributed significantly to delays. “Alarmingly, none of the awarded commercial sites were developed as of March 2023,” the report added.In another report, it detected the failure of railway zones to recover dues outstanding from private siding owners. It has recommended the railways various measures to improve and track recovery of dues.
