Ranchi: The railway ministry has chosen two stations from Jharkhand - Ranchi and Barkakana in Ramgarh - among the 90 most visited stations across India for its ambitious aesthetic facelift plan.

While Ranchi station was picked for being that of the state capital and the gateway to many places in Jharkhand, Barkakana got the honour for being barely 25km from famed pilgrim hub Rajrappa.

Asked about the venture, the Calcutta-based public relations officer of South Eastern Railway, under which Ranchi station falls, confirmed two stations in Jharkhand were part of the ministry's initiative to culturally revamp stations, including Agra, Tirupati, Charbagh (Lucknow) and many others.

Speaking to this correspondent over phone from Calcutta, PRO Sanjoy Ghosh said the move was aimed at giving railway passengers who alight at these stations a "feel of the places".

"How the stations will decide on the cultural makeover will rest on respective zonal divisional offices who would be the main executing agencies. Funding details are yet to be specified by the ministry. But I personally believe it may not cost much. The idea is to give a passenger an idea of the place's culture and heritage by looking around the station's environs," Ghosh said, adding paintings, installations, murals and replicas were likely to be used.

He added that as far as he could recall, Purulia station in Bengal, and Chandil, Ranchi and Hatia stations in Jharkhand had already put up local art forms on their own.

Ranchi is also part of the station redevelopment plan sounded by the Union government over a year ago, as part of which chosen railway stations were supposed to be handed over to private players be remodelled as state-of-the-art transit points.

Asked about the status of that project, Ghosh said that this plan with a few amendments had gone to the cabinet.

"During deliberations with private players, it was learnt that many weren't interested in short-term investments. For example, there was a clause that said the railways would outsource their property to be remodelled and redeveloped under station redevelopment plan for a period of 45 years. But, private entities wanted longer terms. So, a decision was taken to extend it to 99 years now. But it requires Union cabinet nod, post which railway ministry will notify changes afresh," Ghosh said, adding the redevelopment project was different from the cultural makeover one.