Indian Railways: The Railway Minister has said that the ratio of AC and non-AC coaches has generally been 1/3 and 2/3. That ratio has been maintained. The demand for non-AC travel has now increased.
Indian Railways: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the first budget of Modi 3.0. During this budget, all eyes were on the announcements made regarding the railways. Although the word railway was mentioned only once during the budget, but after the budget was over, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav has given good news for crores of railway passengers. Giving good news to the middle class and low-income families, the Railway Minister has said that the Railways is currently making two and a half thousand non-AC coaches and ten thousand more extra non-AC coaches will be made in the next three years. The objective of the Railways is that low-income families and the middle class can travel safely at an affordable price. Trains are providing world-class facilities at a cost of about Rs 450 for a journey of a thousand kilometers.
Speaking to NDTV, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said that before 2014, the investment on capital expenditure for railways used to be around Rs 35,000 crore. Today it is Rs 2.62 lakh crore. This is a record capital expenditure for railways. I am very grateful to the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister for such investment in railways. If we look at the 60 years before 2014, new trains were announced without ensuring whether the tracks had the capacity or not. Absolutely populist measures were taken which had no connection with the state of railway infrastructure. In the last 10 years, the Prime Minister has focused extensively on ensuring that the foundation is properly prepared.
‘Increase in demand for non-AC travel’
Railways has focused a lot on Vande Bharat trains in the last few years. New Vande Bharat trains have been launched one after the other. On this, when the Railway Minister was asked whether the focus of the Railways will remain on Vande Bharat and flagship trains and not on trains for the poor, the minister replied that the approach is that we have a large low-income class and we are addressing that class and then there is an aspirational class which is coming forward. That aspirational class also needs to be addressed, so we are addressing both. The Railway Minister further said, “The ratio of AC and non-AC coaches has generally been 1/3 and 2/3. That ratio has been maintained. The demand for non-AC travel has now increased. More and more people are traveling, more and more people are demanding travel services for the non-AC segment. So we have launched a special campaign. We are manufacturing 2,500 non-AC coaches and in the coming three years, we will manufacture 10,000 additional non-AC coaches over and above the regular production programme.
