Overview

• The approval covers 18 districts in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh under the national rail-capacity push.
• New third and fourth lines will be built on the Wardha–Bhusawal, Gondia–Dongargarh, Vadodara–Ratlam and Itarsi–Bhopal–Bina sections to raise line capacity.
• The government projects an additional 78 million tonnes of freight annually on routes crucial for coal, containers, cement, fly ash, food grains and steel.
• Connectivity is slated to improve for about 3,633 villages, including the aspirational districts of Vidisha and Rajnandgaon, covering roughly 8.584 million people.
• Official estimates cite annual savings of about 28 crore litres of oil and 139 crore kg of CO2 from a modal shift to rail, alongside improved service reliability.