16 years after Didi’s Dankuni-Ludhiana freight corridor, Budget signals Dankuni-Surat connect
Times of India | 2 February 2026
Kolkata: Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday announced a dedicated freight corridor (DFC) linking Dankuni and Surat in Gujarat while delivering her 2026-27 budget speech.
"After the great success of eastern dedicated freight corridor and western dedicated freight corridor, a new freight corridor connecting Bengal to Gujarat, travelling via Bengal, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat, will be a 2,052km DFC which will bring a huge boost to economic activities in these areas," railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told the media on Sunday evening.
Incidentally, it was Mamata Banerjee, who had conceptualized the idea of turning Dankuni a freight hub. In 2010, she launched the eastern dedicated freight corridor (EDFC) linking Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni, stretching around 1,856 km across Punjab, Haryana, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and Bengal. Several stretches of the corridor are now operational, even as the project has faced several land issues over the last 15 years.
"To promote environmentally sustainable movement of cargo, I propose to establish new dedicated freight corridors connecting Dankuni in the east to Surat in the west," Sitharaman said in her 83-minute budget speech.
Industry bosses and railway and port officials welcomed the other freight corridor that Dankuni will now get. While the existing EDFC's route (Dankuni-Ludhiana) falls under Eastern Railway, the proposed DFC would come under South-Eastern Railway. "We are yet to receive the map or details of the DFC that was announced today," a South-Eastern Railway official said.
They said for a state that has long struggled with the "flight of capital," the new corridor could prove to be a massive industrial anchor. "With the slashing of the cost and the time of moving goods between the textile hubs of Gujarat and the east, Dankuni is most likely to become a logistical powerhouse," an official said.
The dedicated corridor would also facilitate faster movement of goods, particularly coal, steel and food grains and serve as a vital logistics link between the western and eastern parts of India. "The corridor aims to segregate freight traffic, enabling high-speed (100kmph), heavy-haul (32.5 ton axle load) goods movement," said an official, adding, "The project aims to strengthen efficient and eco-friendly movement of cargo across eastern and western India, aligning with the govt's broader vision of a Viksit Bharat. The corridor is expected to emerge as a major freight link, enabling faster and greener transportation of goods between key industrial hubs in the east and ports and manufacturing centres in the west."