The Indian Railways will allow setting up sorting, grading, packaging and labelling units at its vacant land under a modified land monetisation policy.
This will encourage movement of more ecommerce cargo through the national transporter, officials aware of the move said.
This has become possible following a recent amendment to the 2022 Indian Railways land leasing policy, relaxing a rule that required lessees benefiting from concessional terms to provide services generating goods movement in at least one direction on the railway network.
"The earlier iteration of the policy allowed use of railway land for general cargo facilities but did not comprehensively enumerate the full range of supporting infrastructure, which is now listed," a senior official told ET.
Better utilisation of vacant railway land is also among the goals of the tweaks being made to the policy. The national transporter raked in ₹3,129 crore in fiscal 2025 from monetising its land bank for commercial purposes, 16% higher than the previous year.
"This change provides clear administrative scope for both direct cargo handling and ancillary functions," the official said, adding that this relaxation will help boost the parcel business.
The number of parcels that the Indian Railways carried rose to 44 million in FY25 from 31 million the prior year.
These steps are in line with measures that the railways has taken to facilitate cargo aggregation and expand the commodity basket, like the Cargo Aggregator Transportation Product and the Joint Parcel Product-Rapid Cargo Services.
The reworked land policy will explicitly permit warehouses, storage facilities, grinding units, silos, tanks, conveyor belts and decanting facilities. In addition, enabling infrastructure including rail and road weigh bridges, truck parking, assembly or disassembly centres are also allowed.
According to official estimates, the Indian Railways holds about 490,000 hectares of land from which 8812 Ha has been leased. Surplus land is leased for commercial development with the railways retaining ownership. Such land is also leased or licensed to government departments, Kendriya Vidyalayas, public service utility providers and the private sectors for railway-related activities like passenger facilities and cargo facilities.
The 2022 railway land lease policy provides for leasing railway land for cargo-related activities for up to 35 years at 1.5% of the market value of land per annum.
This will encourage movement of more ecommerce cargo through the national transporter, officials aware of the move said.
This has become possible following a recent amendment to the 2022 Indian Railways land leasing policy, relaxing a rule that required lessees benefiting from concessional terms to provide services generating goods movement in at least one direction on the railway network.
"The earlier iteration of the policy allowed use of railway land for general cargo facilities but did not comprehensively enumerate the full range of supporting infrastructure, which is now listed," a senior official told ET.
"This change provides clear administrative scope for both direct cargo handling and ancillary functions," the official said, adding that this relaxation will help boost the parcel business.
The number of parcels that the Indian Railways carried rose to 44 million in FY25 from 31 million the prior year.
These steps are in line with measures that the railways has taken to facilitate cargo aggregation and expand the commodity basket, like the Cargo Aggregator Transportation Product and the Joint Parcel Product-Rapid Cargo Services.
The reworked land policy will explicitly permit warehouses, storage facilities, grinding units, silos, tanks, conveyor belts and decanting facilities. In addition, enabling infrastructure including rail and road weigh bridges, truck parking, assembly or disassembly centres are also allowed.
According to official estimates, the Indian Railways holds about 490,000 hectares of land from which 8812 Ha has been leased. Surplus land is leased for commercial development with the railways retaining ownership. Such land is also leased or licensed to government departments, Kendriya Vidyalayas, public service utility providers and the private sectors for railway-related activities like passenger facilities and cargo facilities.
The 2022 railway land lease policy provides for leasing railway land for cargo-related activities for up to 35 years at 1.5% of the market value of land per annum.
