Burdened by the pressure of carrying more than 3 crore passengers daily, Indian Railways would now focus on speeding up of modernisation of infrastructure in 'mission mode'.
"We will be resecheduling train timings for maintainenance blocks in a planned manner to allow the infrastructure development to happen," said Piyush Goyal, Union railways minister.
The railway minister promised that in order to decongest the busiest railway tracks between Mughalsarai and Allahabad, which are running at 200 per cent of their capacity, a third line would be added. The project has been pending for the past 25 years. "I have asked the Railway Board to clear the details of the project and approve it in seven days," Goyal said.
The project is likely to cost around Rs 2,000 crore and is expected to be completed in three years.
The minister said, in a bid to improve train timings, major railway terminals would have additional coaches, so that any delay in the oncoming train does not cause delay to the outgoing one.
The Indian Railways is likely to announce a new train running schedule, considering the maintenance blocks, from August 15 onwards.
The rail minister said that government would make adequate public communications to circulate the new train timings.
Asked about the average delays that can be expected, Goyal said, that the likely delay of trains due to these blocks will be decided later.
IRCTC and railway zones are likely to arrange meal and water for all passengers, only for those trains running on Sundays and delayed during meal timings, the minister clarified.
The railways is likely to upgrade and uplink IRCTC's 16 base kitchens via CCTV cameras, for passengers.
For this initiative alone, government would have to arrange for 700-800 new passenger rail coaches. This is likely to send coach factories of Indian Railways in a production overdrive in the next few months.
Goyal said he is reviewing performance of all nine railway zones, based on their train running efficiency, cleanliness and hygienic catering.
The Indian Railways would be upgrading all toilets in all trains with bio-toilets. “I request the passengers to not drop garbage in these toilets and use dustbins instead," Goyal said.
The Union railways and coal minister said that the government would be completing the upgradation works to ensure better safety and service of Indian Railways in a 'mission mode' by March 2019.
The cabinet minister, who is also officiating as the Union finance minister temporarily, earlier said that India economy is likely to reach double digit growth, by the last quarter of this fiscal.