Overview
- The Union Cabinet approved the package on Wednesday, Aug 19, 2026, authorizing four railway multitracking schemes and a separate four‑laning of NH‑22 at a combined cost of about Rs 13,041 crore.
- The rail works total roughly Rs 9,450 crore and will add about 410 km across eight districts in West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, with projects including Kharagpur–Bhadrak (173 km), Bhadrak–Haridaspur (75 km), Gummidipundi–Gudur (90 km) and Cuttack–Paradeep (72 km).
- The NH‑22 upgrade covers an 82.578 km Muzaffarpur–Sitamarhi–Sonbarsa corridor in Bihar, will be built under Hybrid Annuity Mode at about Rs 3,590.7 crore, and has a construction window of roughly 30 months to strengthen links to the India–Nepal border.
- Government estimates say the rail capacity boost could support about 76 million tonnes of additional freight a year and that shifting traffic to rail may save roughly 13 crore litres of oil and cut about 65 crore kg of CO2 emissions.
- Planned under the PM‑Gati Shakti framework, the moves are designed to speed container and bulk flows to eastern ports, improve access for some 6,448 villages and millions of people, and will next move into tendering and execution phases with official completion targets up to fiscal 2030–31.