India / Indian Railways achieves 100% punctuality for 1st time in history

New Delhi: The Indian Railways on Thursday achieved 100 per cent punctuality of trains - the first time that this milestone has been achieved.

News agency ANI quoted the railways ministry to say that all the trains were on time. “The previous best was 99.54 per cent on June 23 with one train getting delayed,” the railways further said.

Last month, the railways had sent a missive to its zones to ensure 100 per cent punctuality in the running of 230 special trains, which is less than two per cent of the 13,000 trains that normally run on the entire network.

According to news agency PTI, Railway Board Chairman V K Yadav told all general managers and divisional railway managers to ensure that the 15 pairs of Rajdhani special trains and 100 pairs of passenger trains maintain their schedule without any delays.

He said that since the number of trains being run on the network is currently small, the punctuality has to be 100 per cent, PTI further reported.

The milestone was achieved a day after the railways formally kickstarted its plans to allow private entities to operate passenger trains on its network. On Wednesday, it invited request for qualifications (RFQ) for participation on 109 pairs of routes through 151 modern trains.

The project would entail a private sector investment of about Rs 30,000 crore, it said. This is the first initiative for private investment for running passenger trains on the Indian Railways network. It began last year with the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) introducing the Lucknow-Delhi Tejas Express.

Currently, the IRCTC operates three trains - the Kashi Mahakal Express on the Varanasi-Indore route, the Lucknow-New Delhi Tejas and the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Tejas.

According to Wednesday’s statement, the “private entity shall pay to Indian Railways fixed haulage charges, energy charges as per actual consumption and a share in gross revenue determined through a transparent bidding process”.

The operation will have to conform to key performance indicators like punctuality, reliability, upkeep of trains etc, the ministry said.