Indian Railways plans to operationalize more than 1,300 route kilometers of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor by the end of this year.

On 2 August, the railway links on the Sonnagar - Ludhiana section were completed by the railways. According to railway officials, more than 77% of the project had been commissioned by the end of June.

The process of rail coupling and commissioning of smaller sections of the eastern dedicated freight corridor is currently underway.

The Railways are currently developing a 1,337 km route on the route. This route passes through Sahnewal in Punjab, crosses two other states - Uttar Pradesh and Haryana - and ends at Sonnagar in Bihar.

An additional 538 km route, which is also part of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, connecting Sonnagar and Dankuni in West Bengal, was proposed to be developed via a PPP model.

Originally, the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor had a route length of more than 1,850 km, across six states - Punjab (89 km), Haryana (72 km), Uttar Pradesh (1078 km), Bihar (239 km), Jharkhand (195 km) and West Bengal (203 km). This corridor consists of two different segments. One is an electrified 1,409 km double-track section, stretching from Dankuni in West Bengal to Khurja in Uttar Pradesh. The other is an electrified single-track segment, covering 447 km, crossing Ludhiana (Dhandarikalan), Khurja and Dadri in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.