This was stated by Union minister for railways and surface transport Nitish Kumar who dubbed it as one project which the railways needed the most. "If no private participation comes forward," he said, "the railways will complete it with its own rolling stocks."

The section is also known as `golden corridor' since a number of important commercial centres like Baroda, Surat-Hazira, Vapi, Ankleshwar, Broach and Anand dot the route. While Mumbai-Virar section already has four tracks, Virar-Ahmedabad double track section is also running to over saturated capacity.

The minister, who was in the city to inaugurate work on the newly created Ahmedabad divisional headquarters theother day, said the preliminary survey on the third track had already been completed. The final survey envisaged alignment, rates of return and land allocations.

The minister recalled that the status paper tabled before the Parliament last year had generated a lot of expectation for private participation. A number of projects were expected to take off under BOLT and BOT. But, unfortunately, all shied away after showing initial enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, he said, global tenders have been issued for laying the optical fibre network. He hoped some private participation in this project.He said the gauge conversion on the Mehsana-Viramgam section, which is expected to reduce the distance between Kandla port and north India considerably, was also a casualty of such private participation. Now, it was being completed by the railways.

Referring to a consistent need for new passenger trains from all over the country, Kumar said the demand for as many as 480 new trains was pending before the railways. He said thatalthough the government support for the railways has substantially increased during the last year, the latter continued to run the show on its own budget despite being of utmost strategic importance. However, he asked the people to keep persisting their demands.

Moreover, he said, it were the freight charges which compensated the losses incurred through passenger fares.

In a major policy decision, he said, the railways have decided to run 24-coaches trains on `popular routes', even if it served a short-term purpose of reducing long waiting lists on popular routes like Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Patna. He said the Delhi-Ahmedabad Ashram Express might be the first such train.

When asked to comment on the status of Gujarat's decades old demand for shifting Western Railway headquarters from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, he ruled out such a possibility. He said even the Ahmedabad division was created too many years later.

However, the minister assured the maximum support to the newly created Ahmedabad Division, carved outof Vadodara, Rajkot and Ajmer Divisions.