Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee chugs on. She left the fares untouched and showered a slew of goodies in what is seen as a populist railway budget
No hike in fares, freight
NEW DELHI, FEB 24
For the second consecutive year, Mamata Banerjee proposed no hike in passenger fares or freight tariff in the Railway Budget presented to the Lok Sabha on Wednesday and pushed for a new “business model” to put the Indian Railways’ expansion in the fast forward mode while making it clear that it will remain a government organisation and she means no privatisation.
Concessions that she provided to the travelling masses include reduction in the e-ticket charges for buying reserved tickets on Internet from Rs 40 to Rs 20 for AC class tickets and from Rs 15 to Rs 10 for sleeper class, free travel to cancer patients in #AC and sleeper class instead of present 75 per cent concession, and concession to technicians of regional film industry while travelling for film production in all trains including Rajdhani and Shatabdi — 75 per cent in second sleeper and 50 per cent in other classes.
She also bettered her record of first UPA-II railway budget by announcing 125 new trains, extensions and increase in frequency and assured that 117 of the 120 trains she announced in July will definitely start running by March end, the rest three on completion of ongoing gauge conversion.
Lined up in her kitty in 2010-11 are 65 fast trains and another 28 passenger trains. Ten of them are non-stop point-to-point air-conditioned “Duranto Expresses” that are faster and cheaper than Rajdhani and Shatabdi that she introduced as her innovation in July.
Four of them are biweeklies between Mumbai and Jaipur, Indore, Secunderabad and Ernakulam, a biweekly between Pune and Howrah, a weekly between Delhi and Bangalore and four day-time trains: Chandigarh-Amritsar, Chennai-Coimbatore, Puri-Howrah and Digha-Howrah.
WORKERS’ TRAINS: Mamata’s yet another innovation this time that may prick Shiv Sena and MNS is three weekly “Karmabhoomi trains” to ferry the workers from far off places for work, two of which will bring them to Mumbai. One is from Darbhanga in Bihar and another is from Guwahati passing through Howrah, Tatanagar, Jharsuguda, Bilaspur and Nagpur. The third “Karmabhoomi” will run from New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal to Amritsar via Katihar and Sitapur in Bihar for the farm labour that goes to Punjab.
She also rechristened 21 ladies specials introduced in the last budget in major cities of
Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai as “Matribhoomi specials” and announced six more such specials, two of them in Mumbai between Thane and Vashi and between Thane and Panvel via Nerul.
Mamata has also proposed 26 round trips of “Bharat Tirth” trains to take the people around for religion tourism to places like Himalayas to Kanyakumari, Dwarka to Vindhya Parbat, Ajmer Sharief and Madurai to Patna Saheb. These include circuits like Mumbai-Pune-Tirupati-Rameshwaram-Madurai-Kanyakumari-Pune-Mumbai, Pune-Jaipur-Nathdwara-Jaipur-Mathura-Agra-Haridwar-Amritsar-Jammu Tawi-Pune, Ahmedabad-Puri-Kolkata-Gangasagar-Varanasi-Allahabad-Indore-Onkareshwar-Ujjain-Ahmedabad, Bhopal-Dwarka-Somnath-Udaipur-Ajmer-Jodhpur-Jaipur-Mathura-Vrindavan-Amritsar-Jammu-Bhopal, Howrah-Ajmer-Udaipur-jodhpur-Bikaner-Jaipur-Howrah, and Madurai-Chennai-Jaipur-Delhi-Mathura-Vrindavan-Allahabad-Varanasi-Gaya-Chennai-Madurai.
Journalists who were extended a concession of 50 per cent in July for travelling along with spouse once a year got another gift of same concession to dependent children up to 18 years once a year and for a companion if one does not have a spouse.
SOCIAL COMMITMENT: Debunking rejection of many new rail line proposals as commercially non-viable, she revived 117 of them, declaring them as “socially desirable” as those non-viable today can become viable tomorrow. She announced to conduct fresh surveys to persuade the Planning Commission for clearance. “Our objective is inclusive growth,” and so her main consideration in this year’s budget is social responsibility rather than mere commercial viability of projects.
The same consideration prompted her to announce employment to a member of the family of a farmer whose land is taken over for the railway projects, particularly the dedicated freight corridors being developed in the country. The next goal will be dedicated passenger corridors to speed up train travel, she said.
Citing resource crunch to take up large number of projects at a time, she invited the business houses for partnership and announced creation of a special task force to clear proposals for investment within 100 days as she said she was aware of the administrative and procedural delays, external and internal, that otherwise discourage prospective investors.
She also referred to the Vision 2929 document she had unveiled in December with a target of spreading the railway network to 25,000 kms in 10 years. “For the first time ever, we are planning a major jump to complete 1000 route kms of new lines this year with our limited resources, a path-breaking step, considering the annual average of 180 km a year in the last 58 years.”
VT-CHURCHGATE LINK: Mumbaikars will be gladdened with Mamata including in her surveys galore also one for a rail link between Churchgate and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminal (VT). She has also proposed another survey for a grade separator at Kurla Yard. She also announced 101 additional suburban train services in Mumbai, 32 of them from Thane, Kalyan to Kasara, Karjat, Khopali, 16 on the main line, 18 for Harbour line and 35 on trans-Harbour line.
Mamata also announced construction of another lot of 93 multi-functional complexes at the railway stations on the railway land which include Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (Bandra) and Vasai Road in Mumbai, Abu Road and Bharatpur in Rajasthan, Bhavnagar, Nadiad and Junagarh in Gujarat, Wardha and Miraj in Maharashtra and Sanchi in Madhya Pradesh. She also declared to take up a few pilot projects of building multi-level parking complexes through the PPP route in large cities like Mumbai and Chennai.
To make “Muskil aasan” (difficulty’s solution), she said mobile vans will be parked for issuing reservation tickets in the government medical college hospital, high courts, district courts, university campuses, IITs and IIMs and ultimate goal is to open ticket centres at all district headquarters and village panchayats with infrastructure support from the local government and private organisations.
Vowing to increase facilities to 1.8 crore passengers using railways, she promised to provide bottled fresh water at stations at much cheaper rates than today and announced setting up of six bottling plans for the purpose, again through PPP route of involving private houses, including one each at Nashik and Amethi.
ACCIDENTS: As regards accidents always possible at the unmanned level crossings, she said there were still 17,000 such crossings. She had provided for manning o around 3000 crossings in the July budget and proposed 1000 more manned in the next one year. She also announced a special drive to have not a single unmanned crossing in five years.
Mamata also announced 40 places where the Railways will be setting up tertiary-level multi-specialisty hospitals on its surplus land and these include Kota, Sawai Madhopur, Bharatpur, Wardha, Miraj, Chalisgaon, Bhusawal, Bhuj and Rajkot. She also identified the places where another 400 outpatient departments (OPDs) and diagnostic centres as also secondary level general speciality hospitals will be set up. In the list of the general speciality hospitals fall places like Chandrapur, Jalna, Daund, Miraj, Kota, Gangapur City, Khandwa, Vijayawada and Udhampur.
Her plan also includes establishment of 50 central schools, 10 residential schools on the pattern of Navodaya schools, model degree colleges and technical and management institutions of national importance to benefit railway employees and their children in a big way. Their locations are, however, yet to be identified in consultation with the Human Resources Development Ministry, she said.
PTI NEW DELHI, FEB 24
In a bid to promote tourism, Railways will be launching 16 special ‘Bharat Tirth’ trains connecting Goa and popular tourist sites as also pilgrimage centres in different parts of the country.
The ‘Bharat Tirth’ trains connecting Goa are proposed to run on the following routes: Madurai-Mysore-Goa-Mumbai-Aurangabad-Hyderabad-Madurai and Pune-Ratnagiri-Goa-Bangalore-Mysore-Tirupati-Pune.
HERALD REPORTER VASCO, FEB 24
A top South Western Railway (SWR) official has claimed that the Railway Budget presented by Union Railways Minister Mamta Banerjee that includes the doubling of Hospet-Hubli-Londa-Vasco-da-Gama railway line, included in the target of 700 kms in 2010-11, will be vital in terms of business prospects.
The senior official at Vasco Railway station stated that doubling of Hospet-Hubli-Londa-Vasco-da-Gama railway line will be helpful to the State considering the port expansion and growing demand of rail connectivity.
“It will be more economical to reach Mormugao Port Trust (MPT) if the doubling is completed, as presently million of tonnes of coal and iron ore is transported annually to Hospet from MPT,” feels the official.
“Doubling is needed considering one more coal terminal of Adani Group, which is coming up at MPT port as part MPT’s port expansion plans,” he added.
However, the official is skeptical about the completion of doubling of Londa-Vasco railway route in time, as rail engineers and workers have to lay the line in Ghat section and encounter a number of tunnels.
“The initial work on Hospet-Hubli has already commenced and it is given to understand that on Londa-Vasco section, work will commence at the last lag due to the topography of this section,” said the official.
HERALD BUREAU NEW DELHI, FEB 24
Plans are also afoot to throw open its optic fibre cable network for providing nationwide broadband Internet services, with last mile connectivity on the basis of PPP basis, Mamata announced.
Railways already have the network of 37,000 km of optic fibre cables and work on adding another 12,000 km is in progress. The balance 15,000 km is proposed to be taken up through PPP route, thus covering the entire railway network.
It was during her tenure as the Railway Minister nine years ago that she ordered laying of the optic fibre cables along the rail lines. Her plan at that time was to provide Internet telephony, particularly in the villages that are still not having telephones.
The plan was later pursued by Lalu Prasad during his tenure as the Railway Minister in the UPA-I government, but he gave up after the Department of Telecom protested at losing its control if the Internet telephony is allowed. Mamata too did not talk of telephony on Wednesday but confined herself to propose the broadband Internet services.
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