Logo was selected from a contest by a three-member screening committee headed by renowned painter and architect Satish Gujral
The logo for India’s ambitious bullet train project has been finalised. A three-member screening committee headed by renowned painter and architect Satish Gujral, which was constituted by the Union railway ministry for the task, has picked a design – the outline of a cheetah in a locomotive engine – crafted by a student of Ahmedabad’s National Institute of Design (NID) as the logo for the proposed high-speed rail network.
A report in The Indian Express quoted a railway official as saying: “The contest received an overwhelming response from across the country. The dates for submitting the applications were between April 19 and May 18, and around 100 entries were received by the committee from various states. The cheetah represents speed, while the red and blue lines symbolise calm and reliability.”
The screening committee, which besides Gujral also included a NITI Aayog member and an official from the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL), had shortlisted three entries from the nearly 100 designs that had been received through the contest. The top entry was selected from NID in Ahmedabad, the second from the School of Planning and Architecture in Delhi, and the third from the NID in Bengaluru, The Indian Express report said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe laid the foundation stone for India’s first high-speed rail network project – connecting Ahmedabad with Mumbai – in Gujarat on September 14.
The Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail or MAHSR is a 508 KM long corridor that will pass through Sabarmati, Anand, Vadodara, Bharuch, Surat, Bilimora, Vapi, Boisar, Virar and Thane. The project is expected to be completed by 2022. The MAHSR project is a joint venture between Indian Railways and Japan’s Shinkansen Technology.
Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad recently put out a study, saying that the bullet train from Mumbai-Ahmedabad can eventually be extended to Jaipur and Delhi. The study said that the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor was a good choice for the first route as it connects the country’s first and seventh most populous cities with significant economic development in the 500 km corridor between them.
Often described as the fastest land animal, with a peak speed of over 112-kmph, the cheetah has been extinct in India since 1951 – a result of heavy poaching, unchecked hunting and loss of its habitat. However, given its impressive speed, it is perhaps the perfect mascot for the ambitious bullet train project, which promises to operate at a peak speed of 350 kmph.