Rail minister Piyush Goyal works from hospital, trains start running on time
NEW DELHI: With Ministry of Railways facing criticism over punctuality of trains, Union Minister Piyush Goyal has taken the arduous task of maintaining the timely running of trains right from the hospital bed where he has been admitted since November 27.
According to sources close to Goyal, the minister himself is taking stock of trains’ movements by calling general managers from the hospital. “It’s the outcome of the minister’s efforts that punctuality of almost all east-bound trains has improved in the last few days. Premiums and express trains are running as per schedule with some trains are getting delayed by some hours,” the source said.
According to a Railways official, the punctuality of almost all trains have ‘improved’ as the trains which were running late by over 4-5 hours are now reaching their destinations within the stipulated time and in some cases, the delay time has been reduced to 30 minutes or 45 minutes.
Reportedly, most of the east-bound trains were getting delayed due to poor visibility or some other technical glitches in November. The situation had become so dismal that Rajd- hani and Shatabdi trains were getting delayed for over 2-5 hours, while Express trains were delayed for over 20 hours.
The Rejendra Nagar Terminal-new Delhi Sampoorna Kranti Express was delayed by over 24 hours while the Sitamarhi-anand Vihar Lichavi Express was delayed by over 25 hours in mid-november when about eight trains were cancelled and over 69 delayed due to bad weather conditions.
Notably, Goyal has been admitted to a private hospital in Mumbai on November 27 after he complained of uneasiness.
Indian Railways runs 12,617 trains carrying over 23 million passengers daily connecting more than 7,172 stations covering a route length of more than 64,460 km.
The Railways have initiated various measures aimed at improving punctuality of trains and put in place the It-enabled Integrated Coaching Management System (ICMS) for online monitoring of punctuality of passenger-carrying trains.
The Railways has launched text message service to notify passengers of Rajdhani and Shatabdi about the delay of their scheduled trains. Currently, the SMS messages are being sent to wait-listed passengers after the confirmation of their berths. LONDON: The extradition trial of Vijay Mallya, wanted in India on charges of Rs 9,000 crores fraud and money laundering, on Monday began at a UK court here, with the prosecution asserting that the embattled liquor baron had a “case of fraud” to answer.
The trial, however, was briefly halted as the courtroom had to be evacuated due to a fire alarm. The 61-year-old tycoon and others waited outside the Westminster magistrates court during the fire drill.
The trial began with the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), arguing on behalf of the Indian government, presenting its opening arguments in the case which focussed on loans totalling around Rs 2,000 crores sought by the erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines from a consortium of Indian banks.
The CPS admitted that there may have been “irregularities” in the internal processes of the banks sanctioning some of those loans but that would be a question to be dealt with at a later stage in India.
“The focus of our case will be on his (Mallya s) conduct and how he misled the bank and misused the proceeds,” said CPS barrister Mark Summers. He then went on to lay out a detailed chronology of events, with specific focus on a loan sought by Kingfisher Airlines from IDBI bank in November 2009.
The loan sought amounted initially to Rs 950 crores but was later reduced to Rs 750 crores, after it had received Rs 200 crores from UCO bank.
Meanwhile, Mallya was also sanctioned a loan of Rs 150 crores from IDBI in advance of the larger loan sought from the state-owned bank to meet “critical obligations to overseas vendors”.
The CPS noted that in all the loans sought, “loss-making” Kingfisher Airlines had relied on nearly the same set of security pledges, which included the UB Group s reputation, Kingfisher s own “brand value”, a promised infusion of equity funds and a projected return to profit by the airline by February 2011. NEW DELHI: Lower courts in the country face a shortage of nearly 5,000 judges, mainly because of the inability to find suitable candidates and pending cases challenging previous recruitments, a law ministry document says.
The sanctioned strength of the subordinate judiciary, considered the backbone of Indian justice delivery system, was increased from 16,949 at the end of 2010 to 22,288 in December, 2016. But as on June 30, 2016, there was a shortfall of 4,937 judges in lower courts across the country.
“Some of the reasons for delays in filling up of vacancies, as indicated by the high courts, is the inability to find suitable candidates, pending court cases challenging previous recruitments and difficulties in coordination between high courts and state public service commissions,” the note says.