Govt PSU fully involved in Chabahar project
Despite the United States assuring India that its sanctions will not affect Iran’s Chabahar port project, work on the rail line to be built by India is still stalled, even as IRCON, a PSU, said on Tuesday that it is “fully involved” in the project.
IRCON’s top brass are in regular contact with the Iranian embassy in New Delhi and, in the post-Donald Trump era, traction on the project was expected to pick up, but that has yet to happen, senior officials said.
“We are fully involved in the Chabahar project,” IRCON’s CMD SK Choudhary said on Tuesday. “Everything is finalized, including how much we will charge, how much to finance, and so on. The main problem was the US sanctions. We were hoping things would work out after the arrival of the (Joe) Biden administration. That hasn’t happened yet. ”
Choudhary said that IRCON’s job is to monitor some of the work funded by the Indian government. “Without the funding, there is little we can do despite the memorandum of understanding,” he said.
Iranian engineering majors Mapna and Farab have also teamed up with IRCON for projects, consolidating Railway PSU’s presence in Iran. IRCON will build the superstructure of the 600 km line between the port of Chabahar and Zahedan with the help of India worth 1.6 billion dollars. The line establishes an alternative trade route from Iran to Afghanistan and Central Asia, bypassing Pakistan, and is strategically important to India. The Union budget for 2021-22 has allocated Rs 100 million for the development of the Chabahar port.
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