New Delhi, February 26
Amritsar will be connected to Madhya Pradesh by a new weekly train, Indore-Amritsar Express. The rail budget also saw an in-principal approval for a new line between Chandigarh and Baddi in Himachal Pradesh.
All such proposals will be considered on the highest priority, railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said in his Budget speech, urging state governments to cooperate by sharing the cost of new and ongoing projects on a 50:50 basis.
Besides this, the Allahabad-Ambala Cantt Unchahar Express will be extended up to Chandigarh, the Amritsar-Darbhanga Shaeed Express up to Jai Nagar after gauge conversion, the Amritsar-Darbhanga Saryu Yamuna Express up to Jai Nagar and the Jammu Tawi-Jaipur Express up to Ajmer during 2007-08.
The new line between Kakapore and Budgam in the Kashmir valley will be opened for passenger traffic shortly. The minister said the construction of the new line in the Kashmir valley was almost complete.
Otherwise, with an eye on the coming Utter Pradesh elections, almost 50 per cent trains, 15 out of 32 new trains, that the minister announced either originate or have linkages to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The remaining are for the West, the Central and the South India.
In the new train section, as far as Punjab and Haryana are concerned, between them they have
got only one project this year, the Indore-Amritsar Express while the Chandigarh-Baddi link received an in-principal approval by the ministry.
The electrification of the Jalandhar-Jammu section is proposed to be taken up during 2007-08. For the region on the whole, the only other project to cheer about is the doubling of the Kukrana-Panipat stretch.
Continuing with his pro-poor approach, Yadav also announced eight new “Garib Raths” (air-conditioned trains for common people) of which two are Bihar-bound. He said the new Garib Rath trains would be introduced in keeping with the policy of linking all state capitals with the train, intended to provide AC comfort at an affordable rate.
Two of eight new Garib Raths, Kolkata-Patna Garib Rath Express and Bhubaneswar-Ranchi Garib Rath Express, are Bihar bound.
Making explicit his bias towards his home state, the minister also announced the setting up of a new electric locomotive factory at a cost of about Rs 1,300 crore at Madepur. In his own words, “this will help in all-round development of backward areas of the north-eastern region and the north Bihar”.
The eight new Garib Raths are the Secunderabad-Yashvantpur Garib Rath Express, the Jaipur-Bandra (Terminus) via Ahmedabad Garib Rath Express, the Kolkata-Patna Garib Rath Express, the Bhubaneswar-Ranchi Garib Rath Express, the Thiruvananthapuram-Lokmanya Tilak (Terminus) Garib Rath Express, the Kolkata-Guwahati Garib Rath Express, the New Delhi-Dehradun Garib Rath Express and the Raipur-Lucknow Jn. Garib Rath Express.
