Ashwini Vaishnav provided details of total annual expenditure of Railways
New Delhi:
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav on Saturday said India will manufacture at least 1,000 new generation Amrit Bharat trains in the coming years, while work is also underway to manufacture trains that can run at a speed of 250 km per hour.
In an exclusive interview to PTI-Video, he also said that the Railways has started working on the export of Vande Bharat trains and the first export is expected to take place within the next five years.
Speaking on the transformative initiatives taken by the Railways in the last 10 years of the Narendra Modi government, he said the world’s highest railway bridge (Chenab Bridge) and the first under-river water tunnel (for Kolkata Metro) are some of them in the rail sector. Important technological advances have been made in.
Ashwini Vaishnav also spoke on the commencement of construction of India’s first undersea tunnel between Mumbai and Thane as part of the ongoing Bullet Train project and said that there are only five countries in the world that have such technologies.
The 21 km long proposed tunnel between Mumbai and Thane will have 9.7 km of it passing through the sea, which is 54 meters below its surface.
Ashwini Vaishnav also discussed in depth about the fare structure of Railways and its service to the general public. “We carry about 700 crore people every year, practically 2.5 crore every day. The fare structure is such that if the cost of carrying one person is Rs 100, we charge Rs 45. So we are the ones traveling Every person is given a discount of 55 per cent on an average by the Railways,” Vaishnav said.
Talking about affordability, the minister said, “We have designed Amrit Bharat which is a world-class train. It offers a journey of 1,000 km at a cost of only Rs 454. This is the kind of affordability that has been provided. ” Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav on Saturday said India will manufacture at least 1,000 new generation Amrit Bharat trains in the coming years and work is on to make trains that can run at a speed of 250 km per hour.
Ashwini Vaishnav gave details of the total annual expenditure of the Railways and said the expenditure on pensions, salaries, energy bills and lease-interest payments are Rs 55,000 crore, Rs 97,000 crore, Rs 40,000 crore and Rs 32,000 crore respectively.
Another Rs 12,000 crore is spent on maintenance and all together comes to about Rs 2.40 lakh crore. Ashwini Vaishnav said, “We have been able to meet all these expenses because the team is working very hard under the guidance of the Prime Minister.”
“Today, railway stations are very different from what they were 10 years ago. Stations and trains are clean and every train has bio-toilets,” he said.
According to the Railway Minister, with the advent of new technology, trains like Vande Bharat have become very popular among the youth.
Ashwini Vaishnav said, “Practically, every week a Vande Bharat train is being added to the fleet. We will be manufacturing at least 400 to 500 trains in the coming few years alone.”
On track capacity expansion, he said, “Last year, we added 5,200 km of new track. This year, we will add 5,500 km of new track. It is like adding Switzerland to the country every year. The work is going on at the same pace. ” Outlining the passenger safety initiatives, Ashwini Vaishnav said that in the last 10 years, more than Rs 1.27 lakh crore has been invested on passenger safety and about 7000 kilometers of damaged tracks have been replaced every year. Is.
He highlighted the features of Kavach, the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system being implemented on the rail network in India and said that all countries had started implementing ATP around the 1980s but our governments at that time. did not focus on this important passenger safety feature. ,
Ashwini Vaishnav also blamed the previous government of Maharashtra for the delay in the implementation of the bullet train project. “Construction on the Gujarat section from Vapi to Ahmedabad was going on very slowly, but we could not start the section from Mumbai to Vapi because Mr Thackeray’s government never gave us permission. We got all the permits after the change of government. ” He rejected suggestions that the Railways was taking steps towards providing more facilities to the rich class. “Our focus is on non-air-conditioned coaches because our major customers are low-income families. Two-thirds of the 67,000 coaches we have are non-air-conditioned.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
