NEW DELHI, Sept 8:
The Indian Railways will take up a major Cleanliness Campaign on October 2, involving all 13 lakh employees and officers, Railway Minister Sadanand Gowda said today.
“The Indian railways will take up a major cleanliness campaign on October 2. The campaign will involve all 13 lakh employees and officers,” Mr Gowda said at a press conference to announce the achievements of the Railway Ministry in the first 100 days of the NDA Government.
Mr Gowda said the performance of Indian Railways has been improving and its efficiency can be seen in last 100 days. “The number of passengers travelling by the Indian Railways are up by 4.73 per cent. Passenger earnings have increased by 23 per cent over the previous year,” the Minister said. “The efficiency figures have shown such a marked increase because there has been aggressive promotion of premium trains – 29 have been run in the past three months – bringing in important earnings. Seven new trains have been introduced in this period, approximately 25,000 extra coaches have been attached as a passenger facility and more than 8000 trips of special trains have been run over Indian Railways,” the Minister said. The Minister said about 80 per cent of the announcements of the Railway Budget are in various stages of implementation. “The remaining will be taken up within a month,” Mr Gowda said.
The Minister said he has been meeting once in every 15 days with the Chairman and other members of the Railway Board to review implementation of budget announcements.
Listing the achievements of the Railway Ministry in the first 100 days, Mr Gowda said inauguration of the Katra Rail link by flagging off of the Shakti express by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was a major milestone.
“We have also taken an innovative step of introducing the composite Rail cum road ticket to provide the passengers a seamless travel facility upto Kashmir,” Mr Gowda said. He said that one of the major initiatives of the new Government was to permit FDI in Railways. “FDI has been allowed in infrastructure development of Indian Railways to help bring in much-needed huge investment which all big ticket projects like the High speed rail as well as for the remaining portion of the DFC apart from capacity augmentation projects like doubling and introduction of automatic signaling system,” The Railway Minister said.
Listing safety as one of the priority areas of the new government, Mr Gowda said that during the last three months, 176 unmanned level crossings were eliminated as against the target of 125.
“52 manned level crossings were closed, against the target of 35. Works for the construction of 249 RUBs and 30 ROBs have been taken up, against the target of 130 and 25. Also, a system of gate counsellers is being introduced for the remaining unmanned level crossings so that the chances of accidents are reduced to a large extent till either an RUB or an ROB is constructed,” the Minister said. (UNI)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel