Safety, Swachh top the agenda for the Railways

The Railway Budget which this year has been subsumed in the Union Budget has increased allocations to the Telugu states.

The Union Budget announced on Wednesday has allocated `1,729 crore to Telangana state against an average of `601 crore in the last two railway budgets. Andhra Pradesh got `3,406 crore against an average `2,195.7 crore in the last two budgets. However, the detailed budget of Indian Railways "Pink Book" will be announced on February 3 by the Union finance minister.

Speaking at a press conference, general manager of South Central Railway, Vinod Kumar Yadav, said that the Union Budget focused on four major factors in the Railways – passenger safety, capital & development works, cleanliness (Swach Bharat) and financial accounting reforms. He said that the Union Budget has introduced Rail Sanraksha Kosh (Railway Safety Fund) with a corpus of `1 lakh crore over a period of five years for passenger safety.

“The South Central Railways has 335 unmanned level-crossings and the budget focused on elimination of all the UMLCs. We will eliminate 170 UMLCs by March 2017 and will focus on the remaining 185 in the coming financial year,” he said.

He said that the Union Budget sanctioned the upgrading of 37 railway stations under the jurisdiction of the SCR in the coming three years, and work on Secunderabad and Vijayawada stations will be taken up in the coming week soon after the tender process.

“In tune with the budget announcement, the SCR has already entered into a joint venture with Andhra Pradesh and is in the process of signing with the government of Telangana. New lifts and escalators will be provided at 31 stations in the coming financial year. As per the budget pronouncement, by 2019 all the coaches will be fitted with bio-toilets. We have already fixed 4,138 bio-toilets in 1,115 coaches and will fix about 3,000 bio-toilets in all the balance coaches in the coming financial year," he said.

The Budget focused on passenger safety, capital & development works, cleanliness and accounting reforms