NEW DELHI: Amid the ongoing stalemate over change in design of Vande Bharat sleeper trains to be manufactured by a joint venture (JV) firm led by a Russian railway major, a top railway official said all issues have been “resolved”.
However, he claimed that the Russian company has limited manufacturing capability as trains there have less number of coaches while the company said last week they are capable of delivering trains as per railways’ requirement and were waiting for finalisation of the design changes sought by the national transporter.
The Indian Railways has awarded manufacturing of 1,920 Vande Bharat sleeper coaches to Kinet Railway Solutions, a JV of Russia’s TMH and railway PSU, RVNL.
Responding to a question on the status of the project, the railway official said design was never an issue with the Russian firm. “The firm doesn’t have experience of manufacturing a trainset of more than six or eight coaches. We had clearly told them that we will give them the design of Vande Bharat and can use that design for manufacturing. I want to clarify that when the contract was signed, it clearly said that they have to manufacture trainsets with coaches of 16/ 20/ 24 to meet our domestic requirement.”
However, TMH CEO Kirill Lipa had told a group of Indian journalists in Moscow, “For us, change in the number of coaches doesn’t make any difference. During my last trip to India we discussed obstacles with the decision makers. They explained to me that they fix the basic number of coaches in a configuration of four each. The numbers can be 16, 20 or 24 for a train. For us, the connectivity of these trains and coaches have no problem at all. So whatever number they will demand we will produce them.”
Lipa had also said the significant changes in designs included one additional toilet and more luggage space in every coach and a pantry car in every train. He had claimed that the company with a present record of manufacturing 1,200 sleeper coaches annually, can fulfil Indian Railways targets. Lipa had claimed that sanctions won’t have any impact on the project.
