IRCTC launches ‘Mahakal Express’ Indore-Varanasi 3rd Private Train in country.
The Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation, a.k.a. IRCTC has launched a private train from Indore-Varanasi, named as Mahakal Express, which is expected to take its track from 20th February 2020. The train would run three days a week, two days via Lucknow and one day via Allahabad. Recently IRCTC has announced a new scheme for private players to launch their trains to run commercially. Humsafar is the third private train launched which is entirely sleeper based without any chair car coaches in it. The first two were Lucknow-Delhi Tejas Express and Ahmadabad-Mumbai Tejas Express. These trains are considered ideal for long overnight journeys with full sleeper based coaches and various facilities available for comfort.
One of the major reasons why the Niti Aayog took the decision of including private stakeholders in the Indian railways was due to the previous year’s statistics in train passengers. Almost 8.85 crore of wait-listed passengers could not be accommodated due to the limitations of trains. Thus, the railways proposed a plan to include private players in 100 routes across the country with 150 private trains across India. The 100 routes have been split into 10-12 clusters.
Some of the facilities that these new private trains shall offer include fully air-conditioned train, comfortable berths, extensive fire retardant, and suppression system, tea/coffee/soup vending machines, GPS-based passenger information system, multiple mobile charging points, LED lights, toilet occupancy indicators, CCTV cameras, modular bio-toilets, etc. With the plan to privatize the railway sector, a lot of private companies have taken a major interest to invest, some of which include more than two dozen private firms; including global majors Alstom Transport, Macquarie, Bombardier, and Siemens AG have shown interest in the proposal. Moreover, Tata is among the top companies which have shown interest to run private trains on the Indian Railways network. While the infrastructure, operations, safety, and maintenance of the railways will be handled by the national transporter, the private players can stake a claim on lease and offer better onboard experience and services to railway passengers, in terms of comfort, food, entertainment, among others. The companies interested will have to bid for a network of routes and bids will be finalized on a revenue-sharing model. Niti Aayog draft said the time taken by a private train to complete a path shall be comparable to the fastest train of Indian Railways operating on that path with a variation of plus or minus 10%. Another major pointer in the draft stated that the private entity will have the last say on deciding the fare on a particular route. They shall be responsible for financing, procuring, operation and maintenance of the trains.
With the advent of private stakeholders in Railways, passengers might gain various facilities and ease of travel alongside various options available to travel from one city to another. Private trains shall provide an optimized array of facilities and punctuality with a hoard of facilities at a price that has to be barred by the common public; nevertheless, this can be considered one of the smarter decisions by the government in lieu of improving the Railways of the country.
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