Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw on January 28 announced a change in the “cleaning system” for the Vande Bharat Express trains, after people flagged the issue of a littered train on Twitter.
Responding to one such tweet, the Union Minister put out a video saying that the cleaning system has now been changed, while also asking the passengers to cooperate.
As seen in the video, under the changed cleaning system, one person will be assigned to move a garbage collection bag across the coach for the passengers to dispose any litter in the bag.
Earlier, there were reports of newly-launched Secunderabad-Visakhapatnam Vande Bharat Express having being littered with plates, cups and other trash. Railways officials had said that the train was found to be dirty when it reached Visakhapatnam even though housekeeping staff did their job at regular intervals.
Railways had appealed to the passengers to keep the prestigious train clean and use dustbins meant for throwing garbage.
With the Secunderabad-Visakhapatnam line launched on January 15, 2023, there are currently eight Vande Bharat Express trains in operation. These include trains running between New Delhi-Varanasi, New Delhi-Katra, Mumbai Central-Gandhinagar Capital, New Delhi-Amb Andaura, MGR Chennai-Mysuru, Bilaspur-Nagpur and the Howrah- New Jalpaiguri.
According to PMO release the Vande Bharat 2.0 is equipped with more advancements and improved features such as reaching a speed of 0 to 100 kilometres per hour in 52 seconds, and a maximum speed of up to 180 kilometres per hour. The new Vande Bharat Express weighs 392 tons when compared to the previous version of 430 tons. It will also have a Wi-Fi content on-demand facility.
(With inputs from ANI)
