Archive · 19 Dec 2025
Railways Fails to Monetise Vacant Land
The Indian Railways has a lot of land, about 4.88 lakh hectares.
They found that only 13% of it is empty.
Out of this empty land, they only gave a tiny bit, 0.14%, to developers to build things.
The Railways also set up a special group called RLDA in 2006 to help with this, but they didn't do a great job either.
They only managed to give out 8.8% of the land they were supposed to handle.
There were many problems like people building on the land without permission and other issues that made it hard to use the land for making money.
The report says the Railways need to do better at fixing these problems to make more money from their land.
Indian Railways identified only 13% of its 4.88 lakh hectares as vacant land.
Only 0.14% of the vacant land was awarded to developers by March 2023.
RLDA, established in 2006, failed to achieve desired outcomes, awarding only 8.8% of entrusted land.
Systemic and operational deficiencies, including unresolved land title issues and encroachments, hindered monetisation.
Weak inter-agency coordination and lack of due diligence contributed to delays and failures.
- Who
- Indian Railways, Rail Land Development Authority (RLDA), Ministry of Railways (MoR)
- What
- Failure to monetise vacant land
- When
- As of March 2023
- Where
- India
- Why
- Systemic and operational deficiencies, unresolved land title issues, encroachments, and weak inter-agency coordination
- Total Land Holding
- 4.88 lakh hectares
- Vacant Land Identified
- 62,740 hectares (13%)
- Land Awarded to Developers
- 87.76 hectares (0.14%)
- Land Entrusted to RLDA
- 997.83 hectares (1.59%)
- Land Awarded by RLDA
- 8.8% (87.76 hectares)
- Pending Proposals
- 129 sites (69%)
