The World Heritage Darjeeling Himalayan Railway has been chosen by the central government as one of the state-owned assets that has been listed for monetisation.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) wherein the government plans to monetise Rs 6 lakh crore worth of state-owned assets over the next four years under its asset monetisation pipeline, which would mean handing over the assets that have been listed to the private sector for a certain period of time.
According to Darjeeling’s BJP MP Raju Bista, these are just proposals, and that whenever decisions on implementing the PPP model is taken for the DHR, it will be taken keeping in mind the World Heritage status, the sentiments of the local communities and the rich history and legacy of the railways.
The National Monetization Pipeline Volume-2 asset pipeline issued by the NITI Aayog, the think tank of the government of India, also says that the heritage nature of such assets has to be preserved by whoever runs it. The DHR is one of the only five railways in the world to be granted World Heritage status by UNESCO in 1999.
