The Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) is India’s most ambitious infrastructure & logistics project, heralding the beginning of an era of super big haulage trains. In episode 1833 of Cut The Clutter, ThePrint Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta explains its strategic importance, and traces the project’s journey from 2005, when it was approved to now. He also highlights the risks to it posed by radical elements, as displayed by two sabotage attempts that have been made in three months targeting the railway corridor in Punjab.
Here’s the full transcript, edited for clarity.
We are taking a break today, happily, from the ‘war-no war’ situation in West Asia, and talking about something really exciting, probably one of the most exciting infrastructure/logistics projects in India, which has now been completed.
However, so complex are our times that we are coming at it through a very complicated route and an unhappy route. That is what has made us think about this project. Because this project has been completed, announcements have taken place, and sometimes you think these things are routine, things keep happening and you don’t pay attention.
But you know what? Bad guys are paying attention to these things. Now, what are the bad things which I am saying have made us think of this project? And then, I will tell you what the project is.
Two incidents have taken place in Punjab. One in January and one this week, that is Monday, 27th of April, evening.
So, the first incident took place at 9:50 pm on 23rd of January, at a place called Khanpur railway crossing in Punjab, near Sirhind. Sirhind is not far from Patiala. Sirhind is a princely-owned state, not far from Patiala. And this is in Fatehgarh Sahib district. This was a low-intensity blast on a railway track that caused some damage to the engine of a train and injured the pilot of the loco. That was one incident. For three months, this remained unsolved because, at the spot where this incident took place, there was no CCTV coverage as well. Then an organization called Khalistan Zindabad Force (KZF) claimed ‘credit’ for this, saying that they had carried out this attack.
Then, after the break, on 27th April, that is Monday this week, at 8:30 pm at the Shambhu border with Haryana. Remember, Shambhu border was in the headlines during the farmers’ protest. There, the body of a man who belonged to a village in Tarn Taran was found. I will tell you more about the village and a little bit of lore about the village, and why the village immediately rang a bell in my head.
The man was identified as Jagroop Singh. He had a broken mobile phone with an active SIM card. Now, he was found dead. What killed him? He was found dead because an explosive or an IED that he was rigging went off, killing him. He had come to plant an IED, but it went off in his hands and he died. In the process, his phone died, but his SIM card was active.
That the police picked up and then used that SIM card to work backwards. This SIM card led the police to his village and to his brother. Punjab Police caught his brother Satnam Singh, and in the interrogation, he made disclosures that led the police to other raids and other recoveries. These recoveries included RPGs (Rocket-propelled grenade launchers), RDX, and metal IEDs.
Remember, there was one RPG attack at a police station just outside Mohali just a few years back. RPGs were found, RDX was found, and metal improvised explosive devices. Metal is significant because, if it is steel, which it mostly is, then you can use magnets to stick them onto motor vehicles, railway tracks, bridges, anything.
Interrogation of the brother also revealed that Jagroop Singh, the deceased, had made several trips to Malaysia, where he had met many of these radical operatives. Malaysia was the place where these meetings took place. He also was in touch with the US-based Surendra Singh Tikriwal, who is a well-known radical terrorist operative, and also with the Pakistan-based Ranjit Singh Neeta who is supposedly the head of his organization.
The same module, the police found out, had also carried out the bombing of the Sirhind track, which caused a little bit of damage to an engine. It was not that big an IED but was an IED nevertheless. Now, why is it that I told you there is a bit of lore about Panjwar, the village in Tarn Taran where Jagroop Singh came from? Jagroop Singh, who died, and, of course, Satnam Singh, his brother.
Panjwar is the village made infamous by Paramjit Singh Panjwar, who was one of Punjab’s most notorious terrorists. He ran a notorious, vicious terrorist group. He had escaped to Pakistan in 1990 when pressure was going up on terrorist groups and was living there since then. It is there that, on 6th of May 2023, he was shot by unknown gunmen riding a motorcycle, and he died. In Pakistan, he was living under the pseudonym of Malik Sardar Singh. He had taken over the leadership of Khalistan Commando Force from Kamaljit Singh Sultan Bind in 1990.
Now, I am not saying the village has anything to do with the current module. All I am mentioning to you is that there is a history to the village. Now, why have I given you such a long story about two incidents in Punjab?
Two incidents on railway tracks. Punjab has many railway tracks going through it. Trains from Punjab go to every part of India. The important thing is both incidents took place on one particular rail track. And this is not an ordinary rail track. This is the rail track of India’s dedicated freight corridor (DFC).
India has now built two dedicated freight corridors. That is what I described as one of our most exciting infrastructure and logistics projects. The total length of the two dedicated freight corridors, The Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC), of which this track was a part, and the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, together are today 2,843 kilometers.
They have already cost Rs 1,25,000 crore. That is one and a quarter trillion rupees. These cut through 9 states encompassing 77 districts.
11,000 hectares of land has been acquired for this, for which the government has paid Rs 21,000 crore. The reason this project is so exciting is that the normal Indian freight train, which ran roughly at about 20 to 25 kilometers per hour on average, is now running on these dedicated freight corridors that cut across the most important industrial zones of the country, and also the most important raw material-producing zones of the country.
For example, the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor starts at the eastern end at Sonnagar in Bihar and then comes westwards and terminates near Ludhiana, at a station called Sahnewal. The important thing with the Dedicated Freight Corridor is that not only does it have its own tracks, it does not share the track with other passenger tracks and freight tracks.
Currently, in India, both goods and passenger trains run on the same tracks, causing delays for each other. In this case, the DFC has dedicated tracks. That is the most important thing, and that is why the speed, and because it is also a new track, it can carry a lot more weight.
This has greatly improved India’s logistics. India’s logistics timings have come down. For example, a normal goods train would take anything, at its very best, three full days coming from Mumbai to Delhi and vice versa. Now, using the DFC, it can be done in a maximum of 48 hours. See what that means to goods that are being transported, the cost of holding them, the amount of capital that is blocked. All of that makes a very big difference.
It is this project, obviously, which has now been completed. It was on 31 March, 2026, as recently as that, that both the corridors were completed. It is obvious that the bad guys are targeting this project.
I know I have said this often enough, that in journalism, we follow the three-example rule. So, I am not wishing that a third attack should take place, and I am not waiting. I think two attacks of this type taking place only on the Dedicated Freight Corridor tell you that some bad guys have decided to target this very visible and important prestige project, which has the greatest strategic importance for India.
Otherwise, there are 50 other tracks in Punjab that are available. Why target only the Dedicated Freight Corridor? Nevertheless, it gives us an opportunity to talk about the project, which was conceived in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) era. In fact, very early in the UPA era, in 2005, it was approved in 2006. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited, a PSU, was established to implement this in 2006.
And then it ran into trouble. The first thing is land acquisition. And the UPA was not very willing to acquire land. Also, the legal framework was not there. The legal framework was a very old one. Nobody wanted to give land at those kinds of prices. This then waited for a lot of these cobwebs to be cleared for almost 10 years.
In 2015, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved Rs 1.25 lakh crore for the project. When it was first approved, the cost was Rs 26,000 crore. So it had already gone up by five times. This was to be implemented jointly by the Centre, the World Bank, and the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, JICA.
JICA has also given a lot of soft loans for other projects. For example, the Delhi Metro, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train, and many more in and around Mumbai as well. I told you the Dedicated Freight Corridor has two wings. One is the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, which was completed in October 2023. The section comes out of Ludhiana or Sahnewal, a village near Ludhiana which also has an old flying club and airport. Just as the Dedicated Freight Corridor has its own railway tracks, it also has its own stations.
Because these are stations that are then linked to highways, because containers come on these trains. Heavy goods come on these trains, and these have to be emptied out quickly, and also so that they do not clutter the existing railway stations. The Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor was completed in October 2023, while the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor was completed on 31st March 2026.
A proud and historic moment for DFCCIL!
The successful trial run of freight trains marks the completion of the entire Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) on 31st March 2026, with operations carried out on the JNPT–New Saphale (Vaitarna) section. A container train in the… pic.twitter.com/Ngn2nXv595
— DFCCIL (@dfccil_india) March 31, 2026
Generally, the two corridors followed the pattern of the Golden Quadrilateral. The Golden Quadrilateral, as you would know, was Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata. So generally, this followed that, the same diagonal arms. Currently, the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor starts from Sahnewal near Ludhiana and goes to Sonnagar in Bihar.
This has lost 538 kilometers of its originally planned length that would have taken it to Dankuni in West Bengal, which is very close to the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port, which means goods from across India could be picked up and taken to a big port in Kolkata, and similarly, goods arriving there could then be taken to other parts of the country.
The track not reaching West Bengal is a loss for India. It is also a loss for West Bengal. Mostly, it could not be done because of land acquisition problems. And I can guess also because of lack of coordination, understanding, or the simple old cussedness between the state and the central governments, because these two have been run by rival parties who do not particularly have much love lost for each other.
In the process, the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor has stopped 538 kilometers short of where it would have reached. Something is happening there. I will come to that.
This corridor, however, has made a very big difference in the transportation of coal because coal mines are in eastern India, and coal is a heavy commodity. It was cluttering all our freight train network. Now, it is getting on to the DFC and reaching power plants in the north and elsewhere very quickly. 68% of all freight transported by the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor right now is, in fact, coal.
At this point, on the corridors, up to 400 trains are running every day. These include India’s longest trains. Longest as in really long trains. These trains now can take freight which is about 4 to 5 times of the average for Indian goods trains in the past. The Eastern Freight Corridor first, that is 1,337 kilometers. I told you it still was left 538 kilometers short, on which work will now be on. I will come to that in a bit.
This is from Sahnewal in Punjab to Sonnagar. This is the one that got bombed twice.
And then there is the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, 1,506 kilometers. That is from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh (UP), just a little bit beyond Noida. Then it crosses the Yamuna, comes into Haryana. There is this bridge specially built for this. In Haryana, because it crosses the Aravallis to reach Rewari, there is a 2.92 kilometer viaduct built, 25 meters high. And this is strong enough to take a double-stack train. Because these trains also carry double-decker containers. That has been built through the Sohna area. It starts in UP, goes to Rewari in Haryana.
It then cuts across Rajasthan, Gujarat, touches Sanand, which is where Tata set up the Nano unit. It is a big industrial township now. And then goes past some of India’s busiest ports, Mundra, Pipavav, Kandla, and ends at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, which is essentially the Mumbai port.
Now, what is the benefit of this, and why is this such an exciting project? So watch this. 66% of India’s high-density routes right now are all running at more than 100% capacity. That is why you find trains stopping in some places. Trains get held up. Currently, passenger and freight trains both use the same tracks.
Currently, in India, the average tonnage that a freight train carries is 5,400 tons. The global average is from 20,000 to 37,000 tons. This just adds to time and cost of freight transport. In the process, heavy things like cement, steel, automobiles, auto parts, agricultural goods, all of them suffer delays, and some of this is also perishable. That has resulted in a decline of railway share in India’s freight traffic.
1950 was a long time back; railways transported 68% of India’s freight. By 2021–22, it came down to 26%. Who took up that load? Most of that load was taken by trucks, by our highways. That is more than 40%. That also means that much more diesel is being burnt. It adds to cost. It clogs our highways and also causes pollution. Now, increasingly, freight trains are shifting. They are shifting from the shared corridors, shared tracks, to the DFC.
Also, a lot of the trains are now dedicated to the DFC. They are not run on conventional or older tracks. In fact, some of the new tracks that will now be built, particularly the 538 kilometers taking the EDFC to Dankuni, on that, other goods trains will also be allowed. That will not be only dedicated to DFC trains. Otherwise, on the DFC, dedicated trains only will run. Now, these two corridors have been built, but the work is not done yet.
The Cabinet has already given approval for more corridors. First of all, there is the East-West corridor that is 2,155 kilometers. That will go from Dankuni, which, again, is very close to the Kolkata port, to Surat. So, that will get right across India from east to west. For that, an announcement was made in the budget.
However, work has not started on any of these projects yet. All of these are in the DPR stage, Detailed Project Report stage. Then comes the North-South corridor, 1,115 kilometers. That starts from Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh and goes to Vijayawada. Vijayawada is going to be a very important place now, that is where the capital Amaravati is coming up.
Then the East-Coast corridor. The East-Coast corridor is 975 kilometers. That goes from Kharagpur in West Bengal, again, to Vijayawada.
For this also, the DPR is ready. And then the problematic part, the 538 kilometers which could not be done with the EDFC, that is being done in two phases now. So, one phase goes from Sonnagar to Andal in West Bengal. I presume it is about 400 kilometers. This was sanctioned in 2022. This is being done under the EPC mode, Engineering Project Construction mode.
That is when the government does all the funding, in this case the central government, but a contractor builds it. This is being done by East Central Railway and Eastern Railway.
Then the remaining section of 163 kilometers from Andal to Dankuni, close to the Syama Prasad Mookerjee Port, that is being done by Eastern Railway. For this now, 97% of the land is acquired. This is the part I had said I would come to when I told you earlier that the EDFC could not be fully completed because 538 kilometers was left over because of land acquisition problems.
And finally, I will tell you about some exciting developments, exciting trains on our freight corridors and also in our freight system. So, India now has its longest and most powerful freight train. It has been named Rudrastra.
Rudrastra is a train that is 4.5 kilometers long, with 7 synchronized locomotives. It has 7 engines which are synchronized, hauling it. 354 wagons in 6 linked rakes. On August 7, 2025, it set a record by hauling 25,488 tons.
I told you that in India, the average is 5,400 tons per train. This one hauled 25,488 tons. However, this was even bettered by another train which is not that long. It is quite long, but not as long as Rudrastra. That is Super Vasuki, that is 3.5 kilometers. That hauled 25,962 tons. How did it carry more weight? That is because of the configuration of the wagons, and obviously, the weight would also be determined by the commodity or the goods that you are carrying.
And then, while Rudrastra is 4.5 kilometers, Super Vasuki is 3.5. There is also Sheshnag, which is 2.8 kilometers. So, the era of the super big haulage trains has now arrived in India. And that is a very exciting story because logistics in India add an incredible amount of cost to Indian businesses, industry, and manufacturing.
And improving railway haulage at a radical pace is the best method of reducing logistics time and also cost. This also gives you an idea why the bad guys would be targeting something like this, because this is very important. And also, a parting thought, think of the difference these railway tracks will make when it comes to hauling military equipment and forces across the length and breadth of India.
That is why there is a significant strategic element to it.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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