Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw | Photo credit: PTI
Describing the Union Budget 2026-27 as a “record budget” for Karnataka, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday announced a railway allocation of ₹7,748 crore and ongoing projects worth ₹52,950 crore in the state.
At a virtual press conference from New Delhi on Monday, a day after presenting the Union Budget, the minister outlined the state’s allocations and key rail projects and highlighted the two proposed high-speed rail corridors connecting Bengaluru with Hyderabad and Chennai as major game-changers.
Mr. Vaishnaw said the high-speed rail projects announced in the budget will significantly transform inter-city travel in South India. He explained that the Bengaluru-Chennai-Hyderabad high-speed rail corridor will be developed as a “diamond” project, making Bengaluru a central hub connecting two other major southern metros.
Terming the bullet train proposals as one of the most significant gains for Karnataka in this budget, the minister said the Bengaluru-Chennai corridor would reduce travel time to just one hour and 13 minutes.
“Bengaluru and Chennai will in a sense become two merged cities. One can start at any time of the day, finish work in Chennai and return to Bengaluru the same day. Similarly, the proposed Bengaluru-Hyderabad high-speed rail line would reduce the travel time to almost two hours,” he added.
According to Mr. Vaishnaw, faster connectivity is expected to significantly boost manufacturing, design and IT services, which will especially benefit Bengaluru’s role as a technology and innovation hub.
The announcement followed Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s speech on Sunday in which she proposed seven high-speed rail corridors across the country, calling them “growth connectors”. Among them, the Hyderabad-Bengaluru and Chennai-Bengaluru corridors are expected to directly connect Bengaluru with the capital cities of Telangana and Tamil Nadu.
Other proposed high-speed rail routes include Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Chennai, Delhi-Varanasi and Varanasi-Siliguri. “To support environmentally sustainable passenger systems, we will develop seven inter-city high-speed rail corridors as ‘growth connectors’,” Ms Sitharaman said during her budget speech.
Published – 02 Feb 2026 20:06 IST