Railway Ministry shares glimpses of cleaner & modern stations across the country

The Railways Ministry shared a video on Twitter on Thursday wherein they showed 14 stations that have been modernized in the last few years. The Ministry has taken up major projects to ensure that the stations are clean and passenger-friendly in terms of amenities as well as ambience. 

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Cleaner, good looking stations

The video showed Valsad (Gujarat), Chayapuri (Gujarat), Karnool (Andhra Pradesh), Warangal (Telangana), Shirdi Sainagar (Maharashtra), Salem (Tamil Nadu), Solapur (Maharashtra), Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), Dimapur (Nagaland), Durgapur (West Bengal), New Tinsukia (Assam), Rangia (Assam), Manduadih (Uttar Pradesh), and New Delhi railway station completely transformed to be cleaner, good looking and with modern facilities. 

The railways got a budgetary allocation of Rs 70,000 crore and an outlay for capital expenditure amounting to Rs 1.61 lakh crore, a paltry 3 percent more than the previous year, from Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the budget for 2020-21 presented on Saturday.

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In the 2020-21 budget, funds of Rs 12,000 crore have been allocated for construction of new lines, Rs 2,250 crore for gauge conversion, Rs 700 crore for doubling, Rs 5,786.97 crore for rolling stock and Rs 1,650 crore for signalling and telecom. The allocation for rail passenger comfort this fiscal is Rs 2,725.63 crore. The budget also proposed freight loading at 1,265 MT, which is 42 MT (3.4 percent) incremental over RE 2019-20.

With an aim to build a seamless national cold supply chain for "perishables", Sitharaman also proposed setting up of a "Krishi Rail" through PPP arrangements. There will be refrigerated coaches in express and freight trains as well, she said. However, what will remain a major headache of the railways is the revenue expenditure, which includes an estimated salary payout of Rs 92,993.07 crore, about Rs 6,000 crore more than last year. 

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(Image credits: twitter.com/railminindia)