Going ahead with the government’s reform agenda, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley discarded the 92-year-long tradition of presentation of a separate Rail Budget and instead made it part of the General Budget on Wednesday.
Here is what the Finance minister presented in the Rail Budget:
- To ensure safety of passengers, Railways budget has announced a Rail Sanrakshan Kosh with a corpus of Rs.1 lakh crore. The government will provide a seed fund and the remaining will be generated by the Railways.
- Service charges on e-tickets booked through IRCTC will be withdrawn. Competitive booking prices will also be rolled out on IRCTC.
- 500 stations will be made differently abled-friendly by providing lifts & escalators
- At least 25 stations expected to be awarded during 2017-18
- Steps will be taken to launch dedicated trains for pilgrimage and tourism
- Railways will integrate end to end transport solutions for selected commodities through partnership.
- By 2019, all coaches of Indian Railways will be fitted with bio-toilets
- A new metro rail policy will be announced to open up new jobs for youth to modernise the Metro infrastructure
- In order to improve the security of Railways, unmanned level crossings are proposed to be eliminated by 2020
- All shares of Railways CPSEs like IRCTC & IRFC to be listed on various stock Exchane
- 3,500 km of railway lines to be commissioned this year up from 2,800 km last year