Thursday, Feb 27, 2003
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By Vinay Kumar
Presenting the Railway budget for 2003-04 in the Lok Sabha, the Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar, declared the year as `Customer Satisfaction Year'. In fact, Mr. Kumar was out not to give offence to any one. He took particularly good care of the Vajpayee Government's middle class constituency and announced 10 per cent reduction in the basic fares of First AC and Second AC of all Rajdhani Express trains between July 15 and September this year. He also proposed to increase the frequencies of 13 popular trains. Mr. Kumar's budget reveals that the Railways are aiming for the high growth graph path both in passenger and freight sectors. He sought to imbue it with a competitive edge by introducing the concept of reduced fares in select trains during the off-season. In another passenger-friendly move, he proposed to link the fares of the Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express trains to the rationalised fare structure of mail and express trains, fixing the basic fare for each class of Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express trains 15 per cent higher than the fares of the corresponding superfast mail/express trains on a uniform basis. This rationalisation, he said, would lower the basic fares of different classes of Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express trains. Similarly, the fare structure for the Jan Shatabdi Express trains has been fixed 10 per cent higher than the fares of super fast express trains. In a bid to make the Jan Shatabdi trains more popular, their basic fare would be slashed from the existing mark-up of 10 per cent to five per cent over the fares of the corresponding class of super fast mail/express trains. Catering services are proposed to be made operational on the Jan Shatabdi trains.
20,000 vacancies to be filled
In one of the biggest recruitment drives in the country, the Railways would fill up more than 20,000 vacancies of Group `D' personnel in safety category such as gangmen. The Railways has been the target of criticism as the recent train accidents have made concerns of safety more urgent. Other safety measures announced by the Minister include modernising bridge inspection, continuous track circuiting, provision of anti-collision device (ACDs) and the redesigning of coaches. To strengthen the Railway Protection Force, the recruitment of over 3,500 constables would be taken up during 2003-04. For improving the punctuality of passenger services, a new computerised Coaching Operations Information System (COIS) would be taken up. Encouraged by the response to the pilot project of the unreserved ticketing system in Delhi, the scheme would be implemented in North-Eastern, East Central, Eastern and Northeast Frontier Railways. To make refund procedures simple, it is proposed to permit refunds of the amount due from any passenger reservation system centre, three hours after the train has reached its destination. Senior citizen concession would now be available to both men and women on attaining the age of 60 years instead of 65. On the freight front — the bread and butter of Railways — the Minister proposed a further reduction in the total number of classes from 32 to 27. In the rationalised freight structure, the ratio between the highest and the lowest rates would be further reduced. The Railways expect to carry 540 million tonnes of freight during the next year, a hefty 25 million tonnes more than the 515 million tonnes expected to be loaded during the current year. Classification of petrol for train load is proposed to be reduced by three stages, slashing the freight rates by 10.7 per cent. Displaying signs of his reformist streak, Mr. Kumar said the Railways was willing to consider long-term agreements with oil companies for a further reduction in the freight rates provided the Railways got guaranteed additional traffic. In an attempt to simplify the booking of parcel and luggage traffic, its rate structure is proposed to be rationalised. All types of commodities would now be charged uniformly at the same rate but under four scales depending upon the train selected by the customer. While the top scale `R' is for Rajdhani Express trains, `P' is for Premier service of certain express and parcel trains, `S' for Standard service and `E' for economy service by ordinary passenger trains. The new rates for parcels would be lower than the existing rates. All proposals would come into effect from April 1, 2003.
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