By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, FEB 26, 2013: THE thrust of the Rail Budget 2013 presented as his maiden Budget by Mr Pawan Kumar Bansal, is on passengers' safety, consolidation, passenger amenities and fiscal discipline. The budget proposed a series of benefits for making the rail journey more comfortable and experiential without further raising the ticket fares, thus, making it lucrative for aam aadmi which is indicative of election friendly budget. However, the mounting scarcity of resources burden has been shifted to commercial part as fuel adjustment component has been linked to freight tariff effective from April 1, 2013.

This railway budget aims at more comfort and safety for the passengers by introducing corporate safety plan laying roadmap for fast and reliable disaster management system, recruiting four Companies of RFP especially for safety of woman passengers to make the experience of tourists more pleasant. Besides hygiene and cleanliness, extension of bio-toilets, extension of On Board Housekeeping Scheme (OBHS) and Clean Trains Stations (CTSs) to more stations and trains has been proposed. Housekeeping services for inboard and free wi-fi facility for several trains have been proposed for valued and youth customer. To make journey more comfortable the associations with the voluntary organizations has been made to facilitate the first aid services at railway stations. With increasing demand for Shatabdi and Rajdhani trains and responding to this changing needs of consumers for high travel comfort of the passengers a coach named 'Anubhuti' is going to be introduced in select trains to provide excellent ambience with all the modern amenities. He also proposed extension of Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS), Automatic Ticket Vending Machines (ATVMs), Coin-operated Ticket Vending Machines (CO-TVMs) and scheme of Jan-Sadharan Ticket Booking Sevaks (JTBSs) in addition to a large bunch of other services.

After addressing the comfort for youth and valued customers, the Minister proposed the introduction of 179 escalators and 400 lifts for old and disabled people emphasizing that India is a signatory to the UN Convention on the rights of the disabled. In order to provide an employment avenue to the disabled people, he proposed to reserve a specified number of JTBS for them, keeping in view the fact that the PCOs at stations have become largely redundant after the mobile revolution in India.

IT initiatives for passengers services are another interesting dimension which provides for the use of Aadhar scheme by IR. The database generated, can be extensively and efficiently used by railways not only to render more user friendly services such as booking of tickets, validation of genuine passengers with GPS enabled hand-held gadgets in trains, but also to provide a better interface with its employees in regard to their salaries, pension, allowances etc. Beisdes extending time for ticket booking to 2330 hours, making e-ticketing possible through mobile phones, a project of SMS Alerts to passengers providing updates on reservation status and covering large number of trains under real time information system has also been proposed. Next generation e-ticketing will roll out by the end of this year by which 7202 tickets per minutes can be generated.

The railway minister has also proposed executive launges to be established at sevent stations currently. In order to promote railway tourism, multimodal travel packages in collaboration with state of J&K has been proposed along with mountain train experience which will be further strengthened to promote tourism Destinations. State-of the-art base kitchens are proposed to be set up in railway premises for better monitoring of quality of meals. ISO certification will now be insisted upon for all base-kitchens to link travel with good quality, hygienic and affordable food, catering to all classes of passengers.

India has rich glorious history which remains untapped and to make the historical places within the reach of people an educational tourist train called 'Azadi Express' to enable Indian youth to travel to important historical places connected with the freedom movement. The train will be made attractive and affordable through concessional fares.

Railways touches the lives of millions everyday and employs large chunk of Indian population. To improve the personnel skills and expertise, an Indian Railways Institute of Financial Management in Secunderabad (IRIFM) and multidisciplinary training institute has been proposed to set up in Nagpur, and they would enable them to face emerging challenges and tap opportunities for strengthening the finances of the organization. With a view to contributing to the national skill development programme of the Government, Ministry of Railways would impart skills to the youth in railway related trades in 25 locations spread across the length and breadth of the country.

It has been decided that recipients of Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award and Dhyan Chand Award shall be provided facility of Complimentary Card passes valid for travel by 1 st Class/2 nd AC. Also, Complimentary Card passes being issued to Olympic Medalists & Dronacharya Awardees shall be valid for travel in Rajdhani/Shatabdi trains, as in the case of Arjuna Awardees. Also travel by Duronto trains shall also be permitted on all Card passes issued to sportspersons who have the facility of travel by Rajdhani/Shatabdi trains.

To give differential services to the family of soldiers it has been proposed to extend the facility of Complimentary Card Pass valid in 1 st Class/2AC to the parents of posthumous unmarried awardees of Maha Vir Chakra, Vir Chakra, Kirti Chakra, Shaurya Chakra, President's Police Medal for Gallantry and Police Medal for Gallantry.

So far as hike in fares is concerned the UPA Government is sensitive to the needs of the people and it was after wide consultation and deliberations, that some revision was effected in fares from 22 nd January, 2013. The revision is expected to realise additional Rs 6,600 cr in 2013-14. However, he proposed to effect marginal increase in some of the charges which has not been revised from years and includes supplementary charge for superfast trains, reservation fee, clerkage charge, cancellation charge and tatkal charge.