Railway Board in India

Until the Konkan Railway started its operations, the two important port cities Mangalore and Mumbai were not directly connected by the railway network. Even though economic reasons provided a strong need to connect these two cities, the region through which the railway track passed was geographically very tough and would be an engineering challenge. Due to the uneven terrain of the region, railway lines were not laid for many years.
Although the brainchild of veteran parliamentarian from Ratnagiri, Manohar Joshi, national leaders such as Madhu Dandavate and George Fernandes, who hailed from the Konkan played a major role in the conception of Konkan Railway. In 1966, a line was constructed between Diva in Mumbai and Apta in Raigad district. During the tenure of Madhu Dandavate, this was extended upto Roha in 1986, mainly to serve the industies located in the area. However, the missing link from Roha to Mangalore still remained. In October 1984, the Ministry of Railways decided to take a final location engineering-cum-traffic survey for the west coastal portion from Mangalore to Madgaon - a total distance of 325 km. In March 1985, the railways decided to extend the scope of their survey to include the omitted length of the west coast line extending from Madgaon to Roha. The Southern Railway was entrusted with this final location survey. They submitted the project report for this route to the Railway Ministry in 1988 and named it as the Konkan Railway after the coastline along which it runs.
The project gained impetus after George Fernandes became the Railway Minister in 1989. It was decided to constitute a separately incorporated railway company for the construction and operation of the line. Thus, on July 19, 1990, the Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL) was incorporated as a public limited company under the Companies Act, 1956, with its headquarters at CBrD Belapur in Navi Mumbai and E. Sreedharan, a senior railway official, as its first Chairman and Managing Director. The company set itself a challenging target of five years to complete the work - something that had never been achieved in India before for a project of this magnitude. The foundation stone for the project was laid at Roha on September 15, 1990, and the Corporation had its task cut out.