After a wait of six months, the government today announced the appointment of Achal Khare as the Managing Director (MD) of National High Speed Rail Corporation.
The Appointments Committee of Cabinet has approved his appointment to the post for a period of five years, an order issued by Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said.
Khare is at present Adviser (Infra) in Railway Board.
In December 2016, the railway ministry and National High-Speed Rail Corporation (HNSRC) signed a tripartite pact with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for the development of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor. The project will be completed at a cost of approximately Rs 1 lakh crore. Japan has agreed to fund 80 per cent of the project through a soft loan of Rs 79,000 crore.
However the progress was very slow as the corporation was headless and the Japanese counterparts were putting enough pressure on the government to appoint managing director for the corporation.