Unveiling the scheme on Tuesday, the government had said the entry age for all new recruits will have to be between 17-and-a-half and 21 years.
The Centre's ambitious Rs 6-trillion National Monetisation Pipeline (NMP) could fall short of yearly targets for the current fiscal year (FY22) and the next one as well (FY23), partly due to the long gestation period in monetising big-ticket railway infrastructure, Business Standard has learnt from sources in the finance and rail ministries. Officials say the major chunk of railway monetisation will happen from FY24 onwards because leasing some of the infrastructure, like stadiums and dedicated freight corridor, will not happen anytime soon. Rail infra is expected to be the second-biggest contributor to the NMP, with about Rs 1.52 trillion worth of assets to be monetised.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Rajnath Singh on Tuesday demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the wake of Kalka Mail accident which killed 69 persons and left 249 injured.
The much-awaited Cabinet reshuffle due on Monday has been postponed, ostensibly after the Kalka Mail and Guwahati-Puri Express derailed on the same day, claiming more than 30 lives. The Congress is anxious about not sending a wrong signal in Uttar Pradesh, which is going to polls next year. Government sources said that as the prime minister was also in charge of the railway ministry, he was too busy overseeing relief to this crucial state.
'The aim is also to probe how the ministry and testing agencies made negligence in examining these OEMs, so that such negligence is avoided in the future.'
The incident happened during Question Hour when Speaker Sumitra Mahajan took up the issue of 'Go-India Smart Card', an initiative of the railway ministry, for discussion.
Can the newly-minted Jal Shakti ministry bring water to some 19 crore Indian households that have never had taps or heard the sound of flowing water, wonders Vinayak Chatterjee.
The apex court has also sought state-wise details about the steps taken towards abolition of dry latrines, the status of dry latrines, and 'safai karamcharis' in cantonment boards and the railways.
'Seek medical help if after five days of the first symptom the fever has not subsided.'
The first of such trains are expected to be introduced in Eastern Railway between Howrah and Dhanbad by Christmas.
Manmohan Singh has directed the railway ministry to prepare a techno-economic feasibility report of some important corridors.
Capital expenditure (capex) by 54 large central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) and five departmental arms with an annual capex target of Rs 100 crore and above has reached around 42.5 per cent of their annual target of about Rs 7.33 trillion in this financial year so far, a senior official from the Ministry of Finance told Business Standard. "The Centre is pushing the big public undertakings in the infrastructure and refinery sector to achieve 90 per cent of their target by the end of the third quarter," he said. The capex by this group of CPSEs stands at around Rs 3.1 trillion in the April-August period so far.
E-commerce players may soon rent out drones, so you can use them the way you book a cab on an app, and test viable use-cases for last-mile delivery.
Capital expenditure by 54 large central public sector enterprises and five departmental arms, having a capex minimum target of Rs 100 crore, rose 93 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in the April-May period to Rs 1.39 trillion. The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the Railways have started this financial year's capex cycle on a stronger note. In the first two months of FY24, the 54 CPSEs, along with the departmental arms, achieved 19 per cent of their combined budget target of Rs 7.33 trillion, Business Standard has learnt.
'Interim Budget has ignited the entrepreneurial spirit.'
7 key areas that the Budget must address to re-energise the infrastructure sector, suggests Vinayak Chatterjee.
Experts suggest that a revamp in the surrounding infrastructure should take care of the issues plaguing the VB-2, stressing that the lightweight nature of the trains is what allows for higher speeds, and that needless design additions may hamper the train's efficiency.
'I did hesitate and was scared, but I decided to save the child as I realised I would have done that if he was my child'
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affiars had approved the Rs 1,293 crore (Rs 12.93 billion) greenfield project spread across 450 hectares. British consultancy firm Mott Macdonald has been engaged to prepare bid documents for the procurement. As a special railway joint venture project, it envisages manufacturing locos with 12,000 HP to carry 5,000 tonnes of freight at 100 km per hour on all terrains.
The panel cautioned against falling into a debt trap.
France will extend its expertise to modernise Ambala and Ludhiana stations.
Of the 612 trains affected, 602 trains were cancelled, including 223 mail and express trains and 379 passengers trains, the Railways said in a statement.
Passengers in 200 railway stations across India will soon be able to recharge their mobiles, pay electricity bills, fill up Aadhaar and Pan card forms and even file taxes with help from Common Service Centre (CSC) kiosks to be set up by RailTel. The scheme has been operationalised in partnership with CSC e-Governance Services India Limited' (CSC-SPV) and the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, RailTel said in a statement. The kiosks will be run by village level entrepreneurs (VLEs).
Goyal lashed out at zonal general managers and said that they cannot hide behind the pretext of maintenance work to explain delays in train services, a senior railway ministry source said.
Preliminary probe into Monday's train mishap has indicated that Uttarbanga Express was moving at a speed of over 60 km per hour, nearly 40 km per hour more than the limit, and overshot the signal resulting in the fatal incident.
Major players from several countries, including the US, UK, Germany and Korea, have shown keen interest in carrying out the technical feasibility study for the proposed elevated suburban rail project in Mumbai.
The Union government has approved the renaming of Maharashtra's Aurangabad city as 'Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar' and the Osmanabad city as 'Dharashiv'.
Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) chairman Bibek Debroy on Tuesday said the government was losing revenue due to the GST, which should be revenue neutral with a single rate. Speaking at an event organised by the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce in Kolkata, he however said that GST has led to a lot of simplification. "The ideal GST is one that has a single rate, and it was meant to be revenue neutral.
Protesting wrestlers joined several of their colleagues to prepare for the Asian Games trials.
It is for the first time in the history of Independent India that not a single Muslim is part of the Union Cabinet.
Besides advancing the presentation of the Budget to perhaps the first week of January, , there are four new initiatives that could be rolled out from the next Budget, says A K Bhattacharya.
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu travelled on TGV, the French high-speed train, which can clock up to the maximum speed of 320 km per hour.
At the moment Concor, a public sector company controlled by the railways, has a monopoly in running container trains across the country. It offers ferrying rates to carry containers that are one-third of that on roads.
Former Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal was on Tuesday given a clean chit by the CBI in the Rs 10 crore cash-for-post Railway bribery scandal in which the agency filed charge sheet against his nephew Vijay Singla and suspended Board Member Mahesh Kumar along with eight others for graft and other charges.
In Bihar, where a bandh had been called, a railway station and a police vehicle were torched, an ambulance attacked and security personnel injured in stone-pelting incidents on the fourth consecutive day of the agitation, while protesters vandalised Ludhiana railway station in Punjab and blocked roads and rail tracks in West Bengal, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh.
Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait on Tuesday insisted that they have not withdrawn their support to the wrestlers and they have postponed the June 9 demonstration against WFI chief Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh only on the request of grapplers.
The Spanish train maker has offered to test run its lighter and faster trains free of cost on the existing Indian Railways network.
