The body of an HRD Ministry official was found at the railway tracks in Palam, nearly three days after he went missing, police said today.

Jeetendra Kumar Jha, an Indian Civil Accounts Service officer, went missing from Dwarka on Monday after he had gone for a morning walk, they said.

His body was yesterday found at the railway tracks in Palam and the police identified him today. The police said it appeared that he had committed suicide, based on a first impression.

Swiss technology is due to hit new heights on Friday when the world’s steepest funicular line opens at one of its Alpine resorts.

Swiss President Doris Leuthard will officially open the 52 million-Swiss franc ($52.6 million) project running from Schywz to the mountain village of Stoos, which lies 1,300 metres (4,300 ft) above sea level in central Switzerland.

The train, which will go into public service on Sunday, will climb 743 metres over a span of 1,738 metres, at speeds of up 10 metres per second.

“After 14 years of planning and building, everyone is very proud of this train,” said Ivan Steiner, spokesman for the railway.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday emphasised the need to continue the momentum on infrastructure creation and expedite investment in railways to propel the Indian economy. Addressing industry association FICCI’s annual general meeting here, he said India has had one of the highest infrastructure spendings in the world but the momentum needs to be sustained.

There is a need to “hurry up” on investment in railway infrastructure, including on stations and super fast and bullet trains, he said. Explaining the rationale for massive capital infusion plan in public sector banks, Jaitley said that lending capacity of banks was constrained due to capital inadequacy.

Improving lending capacity of banks will be government’s priority for the next year, he said. India, he said, has realised the importance of structural changes despite global slowdown. The country saw more structural changes in 2017 than the recent past.

Jaitley said next year’s agenda for the government is funding banks and completing unfinished tasks of strengthening state-owned banks. The government has appointed advisors for sale of Air India and will soon come out with the next step, he said without elaborating. He exuded confidence of exceeding the disinvestment target this fiscal, the first time ever.

A Delhi teenager has been found murdered on a railway track in Gurugram, police said on Thursday.

Diwakar, a Class 12 student, was a resident of RK Puram in south Delhi. He had been missing since Tuesday when he left for school but never came back, said Tarun, a family member.

“When we contacted the school, a teacher said he did not come to school. After talking to his friends, we filed a missing complaint,” he said.

On Wednesday night, the family was informed by the Haryana Police about a body found on Gurgaon Sector 9 railway track. “When they reached the spot, they identified it as Diwakar’s. The family members say he was brutally murdered,” an officer said.

“Diwakar’s mouth was filled with a handkerchief and his shoelaces were tied to the track. We are suspecting foul play,” he added.

Tarun said Diwakar was a brilliant student and had no personal animosity with anyone.

After months of deliberations, the railway board has finally initiated the process of reviewing the flexi-fare system in premium trains by comparing the prices with that of other modes of transport in the same sectors.

According to a railway board letter dated December 11, a copy of which is with news agency PTI, the board has formed a six-member committee to review the system and submit a report in 30 days.

The committee consists of railway board officials along with Ravinder Goyal, Adviser, NITI Ayog, Meenakshi Malik, Executive Director, Revenue Management, Air India, S Sriram, professor of transport economics and Iti Mani, Director, Revenue, Le Meridien, Delhi.

“The broad terms and reference of the committee shall be to examine all options and recommend the best option keeping in mind passengers and railways’ interest”, the letter stated.

The flexi-fare system, launched in September 2016, led to up to 50 per cent increase in fares. Under the formula, base fares increase from 10 per cent to 50 per cent with every 10 per cent of berths booked.

While revenue increased, the railways lost passengers as several berths remained vacant, officials said.

It has also suggested that the committee explore ways to offer adds-ons to passengers like loyalty benefits or deferred benefits for better patronage of the scheme.

The committee will also recommend if modifications or amendments can be brought to the the flexi-fare system to offer passengers flexibility of rates during peak season, lean season or during week days or weekends or during festivals.

The committee has also been asked to review the fares of the Humsafar Express which was launched last year.

The Delhi High Court today pulled up the Railways for placing coaches for the disabled at both ends of the train, saying there could be no justification for such a move but for “commercial interests”.

The court was also annoyed with the Railways for not implementing the recommendations of a committee appointed by it to provide equal opportunity to persons with disabilities to travel by trains.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C Hari Shankar said the matter was adjourned last time for implementation of the report but nothing has been done.

“There can be no justification other than commercial interest of railways for placing one coach each at the beginning and end of a train for disabled persons,” it said.

“Unfortunately no timeline is placed and the counsel for railways is unable to tell when the recommendations will be implemented. The Committee has made important recommendations for giving equal opportunity to persons with disabilities to travel by railways. The response is unacceptable,” it said.

The observations came on a PIL initiated by the bench itself on the issue of a visually-impaired man missing his M.Phil entrance exam as he could not board a reserved compartment of a train since it was locked from inside.

The court had appointed former General Manager of Indian Railways Sarabjit Arjan Singh an amicus curiae (friend of the court) to assist it as he had written an article giving suggestions to make railways a disabled-friendly network.

The court granted the last opportunity to the railways to place a timeline for implementation of the recommendations and also asked it to form a helpline for disabled persons.

“It was due to such behaviour by the railways that the incident of blind student who was unable to board the train happened,” the bench said and added that the assessment of placement of coaches for disabled was required to be done.

The court said in most of the stations, these two coaches will be at the end of the platform which completely lack accessibility.

It sought the presence of an officer of the rank of executive director of railways before it on December 21.

The bench had earlier said that despite constitutional guarantee of equality before law, the harsh reality was that disabled persons do not have any substantive equality.

It had said that the Delhi University also cannot isolate itself from taking measures to secure the man’s rights and will have to grant him a chance to participate in the entrance exam for M.Phil (Sanskrit) course for the academic year 2017- 18 like all other candidates.

The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has asked Railways to accord top priority to track maintenance works in the Thiruvananthapuram railway division to avoid late running of mail and express trains.

Punctuality of the trains and safety are rights of rail users, acting chairperson of the commission P. Mohandas noted in his order on Tuesday on a complaint filed by social worker Devadas on the speed restrictions.

Quoting media reports, Mr. Devadas had petitioned the commission that a speed restriction of 30 km an hour had been enforced on trains in the State in view of the defects in the Thiruvananthapuram-Shoranur rail corridor.

The SHRC chairperson had asked the Divisional Railway Manager to specially take care of punctuality of trains and safety of the commuters.

The Railways, in a report to the commission, had said no speed restrictions had been imposed to take up the track maintenance works. Steps had been taken to detect the fissures in the track and to rectify them.

The Railway Board is being informed of the track maintenance works and works are being taken up on the basis of the funds being made available by the ministry annually. Railways also have machinery and specially trained personnel to detect deficiencies in the railway track and to restore them.

Railways should ensure speedy travel through the rail network and safety of commuters taking into consideration the interests of the public, the chairperson noted.

After a brief hiatus, the feud between autorickshaw-taxi and online cab drivers has reared its ugly head yet again with a section of autorickshaw and taxi operators at both the railway stations in the city resorting to a flash strike on Monday, inconveniencing passengers. The issue began after the railway authorities reportedly gave permission to the online cab drivers to park their vehicles on the station premises in the morning. The autorickshaw and taxi drivers blocked the online cabs  that turned up at the Ernakulam Junction railway station in the morning in protest against the Railways’ decision to grant parking space for Uber cabs along with other autorickshaws and taxies at the station.

According to Shaji, a representative of the City Auto Union, a few online cabs were parked in front of the railway station in the morning disregarding the auto-taxi stand. “They were canvassing passengers by offering travel packages, which invited the wrath of auto-taxi operators at the railway station. Following this, the members of various auto-taxi unions affiliated to CITU, INTUC, AITUC, BMS, STU and TUCI called a flash strike,” he said.

“The District Auto-Taxi Coordination Committee has decided to continue with the strike until the Railways come up with a solution to this issue,” said M B Srumanthadan, secretary, Ernakulam District Auto-Taxi Coordination Committee. According to the auto-taxi operators, during the Sabarimala pilgrimage season, they get relatively more rides than the rest of the months.

“We are prepaid taxi drivers operating as per government-fixed charges. However, the Uber charges vary from morning to night. It will affect the services provided by the traditional operators,” said Sanil, a taxi driver.

“We heard the Railways had arrived at an agreement with Uber for three months and, based on this, they were canvassing passengers. Each taxi driver pays a minimum of Rs.4,000 every six months for using the space allotted to them on the station premises, he said. If Uber operates from here without any fixed charge, there is no point in paying the amount to the authorities,” said, Pradeep Kumar, CITU district joint secretary.

The railways’ ambitious move to execute the pending projects on a cost-sharing basis with the states is yet to bear desired results in many states, including Bihar where certain projects are hanging fire because of resource crunch.

According to a Railway Board official, Jharkhand and Karnataka have positively responded to the railways’ initiative. While the Jharkhand government has agreed to share 50% of the estimated cost of the railway projects, Karnataka is spending about Rs 2,500 crore on the railway projects, he said and added Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala governments were also funding the railway projects in their states.

“Railway projects worth over Rs 35,000 crore were allotted by the railway ministry to Bihar over the recent few years. However, some of them could not take off due to resource crunch,” said the official.

These projects include a diesel locomotive factory at Marhaura (Rs 2,025 crore), an electric locomotive factory at Madhepura (Rs 1,400 crore), a goods wagon repair workshop at Sonepur (Rs 92 crore) and a wagon repair workshop at Samastipur (Rs 33 crore). Of these, only the electric locomotive project at Madhepura is being executed on the public-private partnership basis, the official said.

The Bihar government is sharing with the railways the cost of building road over bridges at different places in the state. The state government has also agreed in principle to help the railways develop the infrastructure for the fast corridor project between Patna and New Delhi.

The railways is currently running mail and express trains at 90kmph on the Jhajha-Patna-Mughalsarai route. It is likely to increase the speed limit up to 130kmph on this route, sources said and added the tracks all along the route were being strengthened for the purpose.

Sources said the increase in the speed limit on the route would reduce the journey hours by at least 30 to 40 minutes between Patna and New Delhi on trains like Rajdhani Express. The tracks between Mughalsarai and New Delhi are already fit to run Rajdhani Express at 130kmph, the sources said.

he Palakkad Division of the Southern Railway has executed considerable amount of maintenance of tracks and other installations during April-November this year compared to previous years in view of increased train accidents in the country.

Though the Railways is caught between passengers’ expectations of punctuality and ensuring safe running of trains, it has given priority to the latter so that passengers travel safe, Palakkad’s Divisional Railway Manager Naresh Lalwani has said. Mr. Lalwani told that safe running of trains requires regular and proper maintenance of fixed assets, including track, overhead electrical installations, and signalling installations, which require no trains in the section. Maintenance is undertaken under a tight schedule in view of inadequate maintenance margins between trains in the present timetable.

While tracks have to be renewed once in 20 or 30 years, deep screening of track ballast is to be done once in 10 years and rebuilding of bridges, maintenance of overhead electrical installations, testing of signalling installations, and de-stressing of rails are to be done as and when required. Monthly programmes are prepared to undertake maintenance works providing for blocks for certain hours entailing regulation and partial cancellation of some trains. Despite attempts to cause the least disturbance, punctuality is affected to an extent.

More works this year

Mr. Lalwani said 47.443 km track underwent through rail renewal in 2017-18 (96% of last two years), thorough sleeper renewal was undertaken for 50.263 km in 2017-18 (675% of last two years), thorough screening of ballast on plain track was undertaken on 59.856 km (42% of last two years), thorough cleaning of ballast on points and crossings was done on 15 km (30% of last two years), and de-stressing of rails was done for 67.962 km (39% of last two years). Through rail renewal involves replacement of both the rails of the track, thorough sleeper replacement involves sleeper replacement, and thorough screening of ballast involves cleaning of ballast to clear dust and muck to improve cushioning effect.

In the remaining period of 2017-18, more works would be undertaken, reducing arrears of maintenance works. As against budget allocation of ₹189 crore in 2017-18 for these works, the division has spent ₹65 crore so far.