Almost 800 km of the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) is all set to open by the end of December, officials in the Railway Ministry said on Monday.

“The railways is all set to open the 200 km Khurja-Bhadan section of the Eastern DFC, both in Uttar Pradesh, by the end of November, while the 300-km stretch of the Western DFC between Rewari (Haryana)-Madar (Rajasthan) would be completed by the end of December,” a senior Indian Railways official told IANS preferring anonymity.

The railways opened the 190-km Ateli (Haryana)-Phulera (Rajasthan) section of the Western DFC earlier this year.

The 190-km section of the Ateli-Phulera on the Western DFC has 10 viaducts and major bridges, 127 minor bridges, one railway overbridge, 118 road under-bridges and six stations.

He said the 143-km section of Bhadan-Bhaupur, both in Uttar Pradesh on the Eastern DFC, would be completed by January 2019 and the 128-km section of Madar-Marwar, both in Rajasthan on the Western DFC, would be commissioned by February 2019.

The official further said that the Bhaupur-Mughalsarai section of the Eastern DFC would be completed by August 2019 and the Sonenagar (Bihar)-Mughalsarai (Uttar Pradesh) section of the same stretch would be completed by October 2019.

The official said that the work status on the respective stretches of the DFC was discussed during a review meeting.

He said that Indian railways is optimistic that the entire DFC would be fully electrified by the time of its commissioning in March 2020.

The Rs 81,459-crore project had obtained the Union Cabinet’s green signal way back in 2006 and has since missed several completion deadlines due to various reasons, including procedural wrangles, land acquisition, environment clearances and other related issues.

Passing through nine states and 60 districts, the project will have 48 stations and junctions along the Western DFC and 58 on the Eastern DFC.

While the Western DFC will cover 1,504 km from Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust near Navi Mumbai to Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, traversing through Vadodara-Ahmedabad-Palanpur-Phulera-Rewari, the Eastern DFC covers 1,856 km from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni, near Kolkata in West Bengal, and will traverse the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.

The DFC, once completed, is expected to complement the future of the Indian economy with an increased number of freight trains in eastern and western sectors of the country.