2 hour journey reduction for a 11:45hrs journey is an appreciable reduction. Reporters always try to exaggerate the fact.
The fact which is worth giving thought is, just to fulfil wish/vested-interest of a person to quickly complete the GC in his tenure, the work was done hazardly, bypassing the norms and are people are paying the price of lack of professionalism to the working of IR and continue to do so.
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It...
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would have been better if GC was completed with adoption of BG standards even if delayed by a few years. Had the norms been followed during GC, the journey would have been extremely convenient and less than 8 hours long as compared to 12 hrs today and capacity & traffic carried by this route too would have been much higher than what is at present. We would have seen atleast 3 overnight trains on the SBC-MAQ-MAO/ERS route which could have very conveniently connected SBC with coastal Karnataka & Kerala.

"fulfill the political agenda (of the then RM) to complete GC of all MG routes of Karnataka within 5 years." -------- You sound "very similar" in your comments with another member ---- point 4 of
/blog/post/2062090 Both had this problem with Karnataka undergoing GC, the other member had problems with Rajasthan getting GC too.
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If an RM did a good job...
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in completing a work then it is "political agenda"????
Converting MG to BG and integrating many parts of the country to others was the need of the hour and they did it. There is no proof that it was carried out poorly. One can understand hatred towards certain political parties, but downright accusations against certain RMs is unwarranted.
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The problem is not the entire stretch of Hassan-Mangaluru, its only between SKLR-SBHR because that section comprises of Shirdi ghat - one of the steepest ghat of the country. Other sections have decent MPS, so without this understanding don't just comment on conversion standards.
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And don't attribute entire conversions to one RM and blame him for all the woes. The section where the problem of ghat lies was converted from 1996-2006. So that RM was not in the office during that period. You can refer to this /blog/post/2066155 and /blog/post/2066155 where Mr. DSP Anirudh and Mr. Sourav have spoken about it.
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