Western Railways earnings exceed budget estimates

Western Railway (WR) has registered an earning of Rs 2964.53 crore during the first nine months of the current financial year. This is Rs 45.07 crore more than the budget estimates.

WR has also achieved a significant loading of 21.07 million tonne against the target of 20.41 million tonne, up to December in the current financial year.

"WR has always achieved the goal of providing top class services to its valued passengers and commendable progress has been achieved in the current financial year. WR has been able to maintain punctuality on both the broad gauge and metre gauge lines well above the set target of 95 per cent," Arvind Khare, divisional railway manager, WR told Business Standard.

At present, WR is working on various projects such as gauge conversion, doubling of lines amongst others, with a sanctioned amount of Rs 4,974 crore, of which Rs 48 crore are to be spent on Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation projects during the year.

With the gauge conversion of the Junagadh-Veraval section, Veraval station is now linked through broad gauge to other parts of the country.

Conversion of the 65 km-long metre gauge line from Viramgam to Mehsana to broad gauge line under the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) scheme is one of the major achievement of the Indian Railways. WR has received ISO-9002 certification for all its major workshops, coaching depots, diesel sheds and wagon depots.

"WR has always been safety conscious. As a result of the well-planned efforts, number of rail accidents have been reduced by 33 per cent compared with the previous year. Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel are deployed daily on around 100 trains to provide better security to passengers and railway property," said Khare.

According to WR, in a drive launched by the RPF in 2004, around 1.10 lakh cases were detected and over Rs 1.5 crore has been collected as penalty. The drive was so successful that even the stolen railway property worth Rs 16 lakh was recovered and over 620 accused were sent behind the bars.

WR has introduced 10 new train services in the current financial year. So far six trains have been extended, whereas frequency of two trains has been increased this year. In all 639 special train services were run this year during vacations and special occasions.