To Indian Railways, safety is not necessarily a systemic issue but something it attends to only on a case-by-case basis. If accidents were not to happen, the thought of safety would not arise, says Mahesh Vijapurkar
A trained pilot, Dinesh Trivedi has a challenging task ahead in putting the Railways on track after his boss and Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee often came under attack for alleged neglect of this key ministry hit by train accidents in the recent days.
Zhang Shuguang, head of the Ministry's Transport Bureau, said that the new Chinese trains could ferry passengers at the speeds reaching 350 kilometres per hour. Media persons had a sneak preview of the trains on a government-organized trip on Tuesday.
According to new ministry guidelines, the permission to chop down forests will be given only after all the compensatory levies are provided
The Union Cabinet will soon take a call on setting up Railway Development Authority of India, an independent regulator, which will decide on passenger and freight rates
Initiating the debate on the Finance Bill in the Lok Sabha, BJP leader Jaswant Singh said the finance minister should not spend his time in 'accountancy' but 'apply his mind to the reality of economic management of the country." Terming the Finance Bill as the 'child' of the Union Budget, he said it (Finance Bill) should be abolished and if not, then the government should 'break it up'.
The booking of tickets for the Premium special train for Jammu on Monday drew a good response with the dynamic fare system in place for the same seeing a more than 50 per cent jump in the rates for AC-II and AC-III tickets.
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 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.'
So far 2,06,024 pensioners have submitted DLCs.
We have only rationalised the freight rates, says the minister.
India's decrepit state-run train services stand to receive at least a 25 per cent boost in investment to over $9 billion.
Transportation via inland waterways is cost-effective and more environment-friendly than rail or road transportation
The Railways will also add two to four 'Deen Dayalu' coaches to some long-distance trains for unreserved travel to enhance the carrying capacity
In the first phase, ATMs would be installed in popular trains and later on depending upon the success of the facility it would be extended to other trains. Beside ATMs in trains and platforms, railways are planning to install about 6,000 automatic ticket vending machines across the country, beginning with Mumbai and Bangalore.
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.
Konkan Railways' 'Roll on-Roll off' service (Ro-Ro) is all set to make its presence felt in India with the Corporation requesting the railways ministry to extend the freight service all over the country.
Railways internal resources generation has been reduced due to various factors, including cost escalation and pay commission load.
Women's representation in government jobs is less than 15%.
Railway Minister Nitish Kumar has said that negotiations are on with the telecom ministry for equity participation of MTNL and BSNL in RailTel Corp to improve telecom services in the Railways.
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.
A passenger travelling to Thiruvananthapuram from New Delhi on a Mail or an Express train in Sleeper Class will now have to shell out an extra Rs 186.
Anukur Pathak feels Rajdhani Express doens't have a plot but pretends to be a racy thriller.
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.
Has the rail ministry taken care to draw up a transparent framework?
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.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Friday approved the Eastern and Western Freight Corridor proposals of the railway ministry.
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.
In an yet another passenger-friendly move, the ministry of railways has decided to accept credit cards issued by banks with laminated photograph as proof of identity for traveling on e-tickets.
The ministry would spend about Rs 930 crore (Rs 9.30 billion) in the current fiscal year in information technology-related activities out of Rs 31,000 crore (Rs 310 billion) budget.
The resumption of proposed rail link had missed two deadlines - October 2 last year and January one this year - as the two countries failed to iron out their differences, especially on travel documents.
According to senior ministry officials, the loan is expected to be approved within six months. The plan is to construct two rail corridors between Delhi-Mumbai (western corridor) and Delhi-Kolkata (eastern corridor). These would be exclusively for freight trains and run parallel to the national highways connecting the four metros.
A federal minister in Pakistan on Saturday announced a bounty of $100,000 on the head of the maker of an anti-Islam film that has sparked violent protests, shocking many people with his announcement.
The platform ticket price was revised from Rs 5 to Rs 10 in April this year.
7 key areas that the Budget must address to re-energise the infrastructure sector, suggests Vinayak Chatterjee.
North East Frontier Railway officials said two unidentified male bodies were found from the coaches while six persons were injured in the derailment that occurred at around 9pm near Shamuktala Road station, about 32 km from Alipurduar Railway Division headquarters.
The steel ministry has asked its finance counterpart to expedite the implementation of the measures that have been decided but not implemented yet to contain steel prices.
At present, the second AC coaches in Rajdhani trains have 55 berths, while there are 72 in third AC coaches.
Four bodies of the S-11 coach of Tamil Nadu Express, which was devastated by fire on Monday, would be sent for a DNA test to ascertain their gender as the bodies were charred beyond identification.
Indian Railways has plans to decongest network and become more self dependent.
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