The Hindu : National : Mamata announces two ‘Duronto’ trains to Delhi from Secunderabad, Nagpur

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 10, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

National

National

Mamata announces two ‘Duronto’ trains to Delhi from Secunderabad, Nagpur

Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI: The Railways will introduce two additional non-stop, point-to-point “Duronto” trains to New Delhi from Secunderabad and Nagpur, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee announced in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

Two of the 12 Duronto trains announced by her during the presentation of the budget on July 3, will start running within a month.

The non-stop trains, introduced for the first time, will have both air-conditioned and non-A/C sleeper coaches. The double-decker trains announced by Ms. Banerjee will be operational within a year.

Ms. Banerjee, who was replying to the debate on the railway budget in the Lok Sabha, promised that all her budget commitments would be fulfilled in a year. Later, the House adopted the railway budget.

50% jobs for locals

She said the functions of the Railway Recruitment Boards (RRBs) will be reviewed. Recalling instances of violence in many States during the RRB examination by youth pressing for recruitment of locals, she said 50 per cent of the jobs would be given to the locals. Besides, the question papers would also be set in the local language.

More “adarsh” stations

Accepting requests from many members, Ms. Banerjee announced the inclusion of more stations in the list of those to be developed as “adarsh” (model) stations with basic facilities and those to have multi-functional complexes (MFCs).

Those included in the “adarsh” stations list are: Kozhikode, Ramagundam, Satara, Kasaragod, Kakinada, Nizamabad, Kurnool, Nanded, Adilabad, Medak, Tirur, Panipat, Udhampur, Thrissur, Lalitpur, Una, Rohtak, Meerut, Mehboobnagar and Dhenkanal.

The new stations included for MFCs include Alleppey, Tiruchirappalli, Rajkot, Rajahmundry and Talcher.

Surplus funds

On the surplus funds with the Railways, which her predecessor Lalu Prasad put at Rs. 90,000 crore, Ms. Banerjee clarified that a corpus of Rs.8,361 crore remained after an expenditure of Rs.13,600 crore on account of payment of salary arrears as per the Sixth Pay Commission award last year and Rs. 2,600 crore this year.

She denied the charges that there was no appreciable increase in the laying of new tracks.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

National