South Coast Railway (Indian Railways)
Indian Railways' 18th zone, a business run directly by a ministry with no separate legal identity. Announced in 2019, it began operating from Visakhapatnam on 1 June 2026, with four divisions: Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur and Guntakal.
This page is a factual profile built from official sources: enterprise filings, the DPE Public Enterprises Survey, PIB releases, government orders and CAG reports. Figures carry their year; where no official figure was found, the field is left out rather than estimated.
How we verify →Indian Railways' 18th zone, a business run directly by a ministry with no separate legal identity. Announced in 2019, it began operating from Visakhapatnam on 1 June 2026, with four divisions: Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur and Guntakal.
What happened
The government announced a new South Coast Railway zone headquartered at Visakhapatnam in February 2019. Railways are run as a departmental undertaking of the Ministry of Railways: budget-funded, with no share capital and no legal identity of their own.
The zone was constituted by a Railway Board gazette notification of 4 May 2026 and officially began operations on 1 June 2026 as the 18th zone of Indian Railways, The Hindu reported. It runs four divisions (Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Guntur and Guntakal) from a temporary office while its permanent headquarters is built.
No zone-level revenue, profit or staff figures have been published; Indian Railways' accounts are consolidated nationally.
What we could not confirm
The gazette notification was read from a third-party copy, not the official e-Gazette.