Over 9 lakh senior citizens have voluntarily given up their ticket subsidies under the ‘give up’ scheme of the Railways, thereby helping the government to save around Rs. 40 crore.

Under the scheme launched last year, senior citizens had the option to either avail the full concession provided to them on rail tickets or forgo the entire amount. This year, a new option was added in which a senior citizen can give up 50 per cent of the subsidy.

The scheme was launched to reduce the nearly Rs. 1,300 crore subsidy burden of the Railways in the senior citizen category.

From July 22 to October 22, 2.16 lakh men and 2.67 lakh women gave up their full subsidy, while 2.51 lakh men and 2.05 lakh women decided not to avail 50 per cent of their subsidy – making the total number of passengers over 60 years to give up their subsidy at 9.39 lakh in three months.

During the same period last year, only about 4.68 lakh senior citizens gave up their subsidies – 2.35 lakh men and 2.33 lakh women.

“The figures show that the number of people letting forgoing the subsidy has doubled in one year. It is great news for Railways as we are looking to reduce our losses incurred through subsidies,” said a senior official of the ministry.
As of now, Railways bears 43 per cent of the cost of train fare and incurs a loss of about Rs. 30,000 crore a year in subsidising passenger fares out of which Rs. 1,600 crore is for concessional fares.

Railways recovers only 57 per cent of the expenses incurred for passenger transportation through sale of tickets of all classes.

The Ministry of Railways has advanced the target for 100 percent completion of installing Bio-toilets in coaches to December 2018.

The decision was announced at event titled, “Indian Transport Sector: Marching towards sustainable mobility” at Conference of Parties (COP-23), Indian Pavilion at Bonn, Germany on Tuesday.

Ravindra Gupta, Member (Rolling Stock), Ministry of Railways, who is on official tour to Germany, presented the quintessential role of Indian Railways in promoting sustainable mobility.

Gupta also emphasized particularly on the innovative steps taken by Indian Railways by way of bio-toilets for having an open discharge free in line with mission of “Swachh Bharat” and an Open Defecation Free (ODF) Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Two sessions were organized as a part of this side event. The first session highlighted efforts of Indian Railways towards a low carbon pathway and the second was dedicated to overall sustainable mobility initiatives in Indian transport sector.

The event was attended by nearly 50 national and international participants including eminent speakers, policy makers, industry representatives.

The event started with an Audio-Visual film on Indian Railways showcasing key low carbon transport initiatives being taken by Indian Railways such as Electrification, Energy Efficiency initiatives, renewable energy deployment etc.

The session was organised in partnership with the Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW) and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), as knowledge partners, FICCI as industry partner, and RITES as technical partner.

The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal for a one-time waiver of the Indian Railways’ dividend payout of around Rs 9,000 crore to the general exchequer for 2016-17.

With this, the railways can now approach the Parliament for its approval to the waiver.

After the merger of the railway budget with the general budget last year, it was decided that the national transporter would not have to pay dividend for the capital invested in it.

While the railways was budgeted to pay Rs 9,730 crore as dividend for the last financial year, a subsidy of Rs 4,300 crore was claimed by it towards loss-making routes, putting the net dividend reportedly at about Rs 5,430 crore.

“The Cabinet approves the proposal of the Ministry of Railways to move a resolution in both the houses of Parliament adopting the Railway Convention Committee’s (2014) recommendations that for the year 2016-17, purely as a one- time move, the rate of dividend payable by the railways to the general revenues be waived off,” a Press Information Bureau (PIB) release said.

New Delhi: Around 1,500 farmers were left stranded in a village in Madhya Pradesh when the special train they were travelling in went 160 kms in the wrong direction. Reports suggest that the train may have received an incorrect signal leading to it going off the designated route.

The farmers were travelling from New Delhi to Maharashtra but found themselves at an unfamiliar railway station in Madhya Pradesh – later identified as Banmore station near Gwalior, because their train – Swabhimani Express – went off course. In what is being regarded as a case of sheer negligence, Railway authorities were initially clueless about what needs to be done but have now reportedly directed the train towards Jhansi.

The train had left Delhi on Monday night and was carrying the farmers who reportedly belong to the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee. They were in Delhi to attend a mass protest for waiving off bad debts and better monetary returns on their crops.

New Delhi: It was cold Monday morning in Delhi with minimum temperature recorded at 8.3 degrees Celsius, a notch below the season’s average, a Met official said.

At least nine trains were cancelled and 26 were delayed due to fog in several parts of northern India, while two trains were rescheduled.

According to the India Meteorological Department, the sky will remain partly cloudy with the maximum temperature likely to hover around 23 degrees Celsius.

The humidity at 8.30 a.m. was recorded at 89 per cent.

Sunday’s minimum temperature was eight degrees Celsis and maximum temperature was 23.9 degrees Celsius, both a notch below the season’s average.

Former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi was on Saturday grilled for six hours in Patna by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a railway hotels allotment corruption case, official sources said.

Rabri Devi, wife of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, reached the ED zonal office in the state capital by noon. “A special team of the agency from Delhi recorded her statement under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). She was questioned for six hours,” a senior official said.

The ED has earlier questioned Rabri Devi’s son Tejashwi Yadav, former deputy chief minister of Bihar, twice in this case.

In July, the agency had registered a case against Lalu Prasad, his family members and others under various provisions of the PMLA.

Before that, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had registered a first information report and conducted multiple searches on the properties of Lalu Prasad and others.

The CBI FIR alleged that Lalu Prasad, during his tenure as the railway minister in the UPA-I government, handed over the maintenance of two Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) hotels to a company in 2004 after receiving bribe in the form of a prime land in Patna through a ‘benami’ company owned by Sarla Gupta, wife of Prem Chand Gupta, a former Union minister.

The ED registered the criminal case against his family members and others under the PMLA, based on the CBI FIR.

The CBI has already recorded the statements of Tejashwi and Lalu Prasad in this case. The ED is investigating the alleged “proceeds of crime” generated by the accused, purportedly through shell companies, according to the officials.

Others named in the CBI FIR include Vijay Kochhar, Vinay Kochhar (both directors of Sujata Hotels), Delight Marketing company, now known as Lara Projects, and then IRCTC managing director P K Goel.

The CBI FIR was registered on July 5 in connection with favours allegedly extended to Sujata Hotels in awarding a contract for the upkeep of the hotels in Ranchi and Puri and receiving premium land as “quid pro quo”.

Over 9 lakh senior citizens have voluntarily given up their ticket subsidies under the ‘give up’ scheme of the Railways, thereby helping the government to save around Rs. 40 crore.

Under the scheme launched last year, senior citizens had the option to either avail the full concession provided to them on rail tickets or forgo the entire amount. This year, a new option was added in which a senior citizen can give up 50 per cent of the subsidy.

The scheme was launched to reduce the nearly Rs. 1,300 crore subsidy burden of the Railways in the senior citizen category.

From July 22 to October 22, 2.16 lakh men and 2.67 lakh women gave up their full subsidy, while 2.51 lakh men and 2.05 lakh women decided not to avail 50 per cent of their subsidy – making the total number of passengers over 60 years to give up their subsidy at 9.39 lakh in three months.

During the same period last year, only about 4.68 lakh senior citizens gave up their subsidies – 2.35 lakh men and 2.33 lakh women.

“The figures show that the number of people letting forgoing the subsidy has doubled in one year. It is great news for Railways as we are looking to reduce our losses incurred through subsidies,” said a senior official of the ministry.

As of now, Railways bears 43 per cent of the cost of train fare and incurs a loss of about Rs. 30,000 crore a year in subsidising passenger fares out of which Rs. 1,600 crore is for concessional fares.

Railways recovers only 57 per cent of the expenses incurred for passenger transportation through sale of tickets of all classes.

It’s approaching fog time again, threatening severe disruption of train services as is usual every winter, causing much inconvenience to passengers.However, the railways’ fog-preparedness still seems to inadequate as the much talked-about LED fog lights and other technology in locomotives of north-bound trains — aimed at increasing visibility for train drivers in adverse weather conditions — is still in the trial stage.

All north-bound trains get delayed for hours due to poor visibility during foggy weather, causing a ripple effect on the congested network. The dense fog forces drivers to slow down train speeds up to 15 kmph as a safety requirement — resulting in delays ranging between four and 22 hours.

Rattled by the massive disruption in services year after year in winter, the railways has initiated several steps to use technology to fight fog.

Since drivers cannot see the signals due to the fog, crackers are put on the track ahead of the station. When the train passes over the crackers they burst and alert the drivers that a station is approaching.

“For us, the safety of passengers is of paramount importance. Even if a train is delayed, the passengers should travel safe. Since visibility drops, drivers cannot see the signals and take the risk of maintaining the normal speed. There are always chances of accidents during the fog because drivers fail to see signals,” said a senior Railway Ministry official involved in safety who was not authorised to speak to the press.

The TPWS, based on the European system, and the indigenously-developed TCAS enable the driver to see the signal in his cabin through a cab signalling system. Even in dense fog or heavy rain, the driver easily sees the signals in his cabin and accordingly maintains speed. The system incorporates an automatic braking system in case the driver fails to do so manually in the event of an emergency.

However, only 35 locomotives are equipped with the TPWS system for trials. Besides, some EMUs on the Chennai suburban network and the Kolkata Metro are TPWS compliant.

With TCAS, drivers get a real-time display of signals inside the cabin, This traces the location of the train through the distance traversed through RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags installed on the tracks and transmits the signal to all other trains in the vicinity.

The Tri-NETRA system enables the driver to view the terrain on a computer installed in the cabin.

However, all these systems are in the pilot stage.

As for the LED fog lights, the Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) of the railways is currently finalising their specifications on these.

The railways expects that once these systems are installed, it will help in enhancing the vision of locomotive drivers in difficult weather conditions, such as fog, heavy rains and during the night time so that they have enough time to react to an emergency.

Nearly a month after dairy giant Amul approached the Indian Railways on its official Twitter handle with a business proposition to use refrigerated parcel vans to transport butter across India, the first shipment is on its way.

“First refrigerator van with 17 MT #Amul butter being flagged off from Palanpur to Delhi with our milk train. Thanks @RailMinIndia for the prompt action,” Amul tweeted on Saturday.

On September 23, Amul had reached out to the railway ministry on its Twitter handle for advice on the proposition, saying the dairy major was “interested in using refrigerated parcel vans to transport Amul butter across India.”

The Railways promptly responded on the micro-blogging site, using a popular tag line of the company. “IR will be utterly butterly delighted to get the taste of India to every Indian,” the ministry’s handle @RailMinIndia tweeted.

The national transporter uses Twitter extensively to address passenger woes. But that was perhaps the first time it received a business proposition on the popular social site.

The Indian Railways had introduced the refrigerated van service a few years ago with an aim to facilitate the transportation of perishable commodities such as fruits, vegetables, frozen meats/poultry and chocolates.

However, these services existed only on specific routes.