Home » Indian Budget » Budget 2006-2007 » Rail Budget 2006-2007 » Path Breaking Performance by Indian Railways

The Union Minister for Railways, Shri Lalu Prasad, while presenting the Railway Budget for 2006-07 in the Lok Sabha today, said that his approach in bringing about improvements in railways was based on raising quality of service, reducing unit cost and sharing resultant gains with consumers. He moved away from the beaten path and announced reduction in AC First and Second Class fares as also no increase in passenger and freight rates.

The Indian Railways have performed exceedingly well in the first nine months of the current financial year and the railways’ performance has been record breaking. The growth in freight loading and freight revenues has gone up by 10 per cent and 18 per cent respectively. The freight loading target therefore is being increased from 635 MT to 668 MT and the goods revenue target from Rs.33480 crore to Rs.36490 crore. The Tenth Plan targets of 624 MT loading and 396 Billion Tonne Kilometres have been surpassed one year in advance. The incremental target of 63 Billion TKM for freight loading for the Tenth Plan will be surpassed by over 200 per cent. 

There has been a remarkable improvement in operating efficiency of the Freight Operating Information System  and the first phase of the project Rake Management System has been implemented at all major locations. It is proposed to implement Terminal Management System in the second phase of the project at all major locations. The Railway Minister informed the Lok Sabha that he has succeeded in increasing profits in the freight segment by adopting the Increase Volumes – Reduce Unit Cost strategy. He said he has decided to adopt the same strategy for the passenger segment.

It is proposed to encourage Public Partnership and Public-Private Partnership in coordination with State Governments, local bodies, ports and private sector to invest in rail projects for expanding and developing the railway network throughout the country. So far, Rs.540 crore from 14 applicants have been received as registration fee for permission to private parties to run container trains and a level playing field would be made available without any discrimination. The first double stack container train would be introduced in the first week of March which is likely to make rail based container transportation more economical and competitive.

The leasing policy on brake and parcel vans has been liberalized to improve capacity utilization through open tenders. The 150 KG ceiling for booking luggage in the brake van has also been removed.

55 pairs of new trains have been introduced. A pilot project on upgradation of passengers to the next higher class without additional charges  introduced on 26^th January 2006 has now been extended to all Rajdhani, mail and express trains. The Minister announced an ambitious programme to cut down losses in the coaching services by about Rs.1000 crore in the coming year and by 50 per cent in the next three years by increasing the number of coaches and occupancy of trains, reducing travel time and reducing losses in the catering and parcel segment. The Minister informed the House about the preparation of an All India Time Table with a zero base in the current year which will lead to reduced journey time on Shatabdis and Rajdhanis.

The facility of i-ticket and e-ticket has now been made available on all mail and express trains. The charges leviable on issue of e-tickets have been reduced by Rs.20 per ticket in higher classes and by Rs.15 per ticket in sleeper classes. Passengers can now buy i-ticket and e-ticket through rail travel service agents also. Passenger Reservation System (PRS)  is functioning at 1290 locations in the country while Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) is functioning at 380 locations. 1310 PRS centres and 425 UTS centres will be functional by the end of the current year.

A Jansadharan Ticket Booking Scheme has been formulated to make available prepaid UTS counters to the unemployed youth. Under another scheme of Gramin Ticket Booking Service, the Railways would provide agency to unemployed rural youth for issuing tickets at roadside stations. 200 automatic ticket vending machines are also proposed to be installed in Mumbai suburban areas of Central and Western Railways, which will be connected to the UTS and will dispense tickets automatically through Smart Cards.

Railways are providing special squads in compartments reserved for women in the suburban rail areas.

It is proposed to give 50 percent concession in Second class and sleeper class fares to persons who have lost their limbs in accidents or due to any other causes, for travel to institutes of national level, for transportation of artificial limbs like Jaipur Foot etc., along with one attendant.

The Research & Development Organisation is designing new high capacity wagons with a load of upto 70 tonnes for commodities like coal. Regular production of these wagons, with payload to tare weight ratio of even better than 3:1, will start from the year 2007-08. Transfer of technology is being considered as an option for manufacturing 25 tonne axle load wagons which can carry loads upto 80 tonnes and whose payload to tare weight ratio is around 4:1.

1280 route kms of railway electrification have been completed against the Tenth Five Year Plan target of 1800 route kms.