Some of the important statements
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"The railways would provide confirmed tickets on demand on all trains by 2020, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said"
IR could at the best do on the Delhi-Mumbai, Ludhiana-Delhi-Sonpur (i.e. fraction of Delhi-Kolkata route) sectors where parallel DFCs are expected to be operational by 2020.For all the routes, more DFCs need to be constructed. As most of the...
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routes age 120-160% saturated, construction of one more line on some of the stretches in coming 3 years shall not be sufficient as the traffic shall further increase by 20% and saturation shall grow to 140-180% and third track shall not be enough to totally de-congest the track
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"We have put in investments worth Rs 8.5 lakh crore in high density network"-
8.5 lac crore investment is proposed by IR in 5 years which include New Lines (Many of them are loss making), Gauge conversion (Most of them shall be loss making), Doubling work (Substantial part dedicated to High Density Network), Electrification etc. Actual investment in HDN which carry most of traffic and give profits should be just a fraction of 8.5lac Crore Rs.
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"The revenue loss for meeting public service obligation is as high as Rs. 30,000 crore"
Just calculation of the existing loss making figure is not going to do good for IR in long run. IR need to operate with much more efficiency than present by proper utilisation of its major resources like manpower, trains, funds so as to achieve maximum resource generation and at minimum cost. If this is done, the so called revenue loss of Rs. 30000 crore shall be a much lower figure.
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“The non-fare revenue rose 72% this year. Our target is to increase it to around Rs. 35,000 crore in the next 10 years,"
The rise in non-fare revenue is very encouraging. IR had been trying to raise non-fare revenue since last 15-20 years but was continuously failing. Of late IR have succeeded to cut ice with the achievement of 72% annual growth, which is impressive, but it is just a beginning. Such tempo has to be maintained for a some more years if non fare revenue is to become a countable component of IR revenue basket.