New Delhi: It’s no rail budget but 46 pages of intentions that Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu presented on Thursday to the Lok Sabha, stressing that he wants to make the customers “happy” and that too means no hike in passenger fare or freight rate but revenue search from the non-tariff resources.
No reason to cheer about fare and freight left untouched as he is transferring this unpleasant task to the proposed Rail Development Authority. He has made the draft bill ready after extensive consultations with the stakeholders.
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The budget is supposed to focus on what to expect in the coming financial year, but Prabhu has opted for a 5-year vision, setting his eyes on achievements by 2020 when he promises reserved accommodation on trains “on demand,” almost 95% punctuality, improved safety using high-end technology, zero direct discharge of human waste, elimination of all unmanned level crossings, time-tabled freight trains with credible service commitments and speeding mail/express trains to 80 km per hour and freight trains to 50 kmph.
He went on to set out seven missions to achieve all this and more in the next five years that include Mission Zero Accident to eliminate all unmanned level crossings on broad gauge in the next 3-4 years and installing train collision avoidance system in the next three years. Other missions include Mission Raftaar to increase average speed of mail/express trains by 25 kmph in five years, Mission Hundred to promote private sidings and freight terminals, and Mission Capacity Utilisation to commission two dedicated freight corridors of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata and shifting goods trains to these corridors from existing tracks to free up them for more passenger services.
Also read: PM Modi lauds Prabhu’s ‘extraordinary’ rail budget
A practicing chartered accountant by profession, Prabhu (62) chose to push the statistics to the annexure and not in his 65-minute long budget speech, giving out only two figures — an optimistic revenue generation of Rs 1.84,820 crore in the next financial year of 2016-17, a 10.1% higher than the revised current year target and the capital expenditure pegged at Rs 1.21 lakh crore. His wife Sumati, who sat with son in the Speaker’s Gallery, thumped for a while.
The Opposition members were agitated towards the end of his speech as he declared no new trains, no new railway lines nor any kind of reliefs to cheer about. They, however, lost the specific announcements he made for the unreserved passengers — Antyodaya Express and Deen Dayalu coaches, and Humsafar, Tejas and UDAY for the reserved classes.
Prabhu proposed to introduce the Antyodaya Express, a long-distance fully unreserved superfast for the commonman on the dense routes and addition of two to four Deen Dayalu coaches in some long-distance trains for the unreserved travel, with facility of drinking water and mobile charging points.
As cost recovery by way of tariff and non-tariff measures, he proposed Humsafar as a fully air-conditioned third AC service with option of meals, Tejas at speed of 130 kmph and above with onboard services like entertainment, local cuisine, wi-fi, and overnight double-decker Air-Conditioned Yatri (UDAY) Express on the busiest routes to increase carrying capacity by almost 40%.
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The Railway Minister also offered to expand the “Vikalp” system of alternative train accommodation introduced in October to provide choice o accommodation in specific trains to the wait-listed.
There are many small, small announcements to cheer about. Instead of the passenger required to rush to the booking window for refund of the reserved tickets, Prabhu promised to open the cancellation facility through 139 helpline, post verification using ‘one time password’ sent on registered mobile number. Journalists too need not visit the booking window for reservation on the concessional pass as they too can do e-booking of tickets.
He also made eight specific offers on catering and stalls, including extension of e-catering from existing 45 large stations to all 408 A-1 and A class stations, local cuisine of choice to the passengers, IRCTC to take over catering in phased manner, reservation to SCs, STs, OBCs, and the blind in allotment of food stalls at stations, with 33% of them reserved for women in each category. To mitigate hardship of mothers travelling with infants, pilot project promised to provide children’s menu on trains and baby food, hot milk and hot water on stations.
Also read: Rail Budget aims at ‘yatri ki garima’, ‘rail ki gati’, ‘desh ki pragati’
Prabhu also removed the historical distinction between operational and commercial halts by converting all operational ones into commercial halts to enable use them to board or disembark the trains at these halts. He also offered travel insurance to passengers as optional at the time of booking and providing hourly booking of retiring rooms to help transiting passengers freshen up.
Pilgrimage was also not missed by Prabhu as he declared to take up on priority provision of amenities and beautification of stations at 18 pilgrim centres, including Vasco in Goa, Nanded and Nasik in Maharashtra, Ajmer in Rajasthan, Amritsar, Dwarka in Gujarat, Mathura and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Tirupati. He also declared intent to run Aastha circuit trains connecting important pilgrim centres.
Also read: No changes in passenger fares, freight
Porters at the railway stations will no longer be called coolie as Prabhu rechristened them as “Sahayak,” and promised to change their uniform too and train them in “soft skills.”
Not forgetting Prime Minister Modi’s pet bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, he announced registration of a special purpose vehicle “this month” for building the high-speed passenger corridor between two cities with the assistance from the Japan Government.
