Union Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi will present this year's Railway Budget on March 14. Following are the 10 reasons why the Railway Budget matters. 1. Indian Railways has 114,500 kilometres of total track over a route of 65,000 kilometres and 7,500 stations. It has the world's fourth largest railway network after those of the United States, Russia and China. It carries over 30 million passengers and 2.8 million tons of...
10:36 AM, Mar 13, 2012
The Railways are a state within a state with the attitude of a village. Successive railway ministers in the past two decades, most notably Mamata Banerjee and Ram Vilas Paswan, have driven the Railways to rack and ruin. Commentators in the media have excoriated them and rightly so. But the faceless gnomes of the Railway Board cannot escape blame for hollowing out the organisation from within. They are unworthy of...
12:05 AM, Mar 13, 2012
New Delhi: Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi is likely to spell out a blue print for upgrading signaling and telecommunication system to prevent accidents in the upcoming Rail Budget despite financial constraints. Besides, the Rail Budget will have proposals for state-of-the-art coach manufacturing units in Karnataka and Gujarat. Railways which has sought Rs 50,000 crore from Finance Ministry as gross budgetary support (GBS), has got only Rs 25,000 crore for the...
06:57 PM, Mar 12, 2012
Mumbai: While high-speed trains have been zipping passengers across cities and continents in Western and Asian countries for years, the idea of introducing the bullet train is finally going to be a reality in India. Three days before the Rail Budget will be unveiled, there is good news for Mumbai's Gujarati businessmen and workers alike. In what could be a first for the Indian Railways, a high-speed corridor for long...
04:36 PM, Mar 12, 2012
Kolkata: With less than 48 hours to go for the Railway Budget, CNN-IBN gets you voices of people from the two states which have had the maximum number of Railway Ministers - Bihar and West Bengal. Have things changed for the rail passengers? The Indian Railways today is staring at some uncertain times ahead. What about more than 20 million passengers that depend on it every day? CNN-IBN finds out...
07:12 AM, Mar 12, 2012
New Delhi: A week ahead of his maiden budget on March 14, Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi on Friday announced 26 new trains, extended runs of five existing trains, increased the frequency of two trains and introduced five new suburban trains, promised by his party boss Mamata Banerjee last year. Though a high-level panel, headed by Atomic Energy Commission former chairman Anil Kakodkar, advised Trivedi not to announce any new trains...
06:05 PM, Mar 09, 2012
New Delhi: The Railways on Friday announced introduction of 26 new trains including Kathgodam Shatabdi Express, Mumbai-New Delhi AC Duronto and Mumbai-Chandigarh Express as part of the promises made in Rail Budget 2011-12. However, the much sought after AC double decker trains between Delhi-Jaipur and Mumbai-Ahmedabad, announced in the last Rail Budget, are yet to be launched. Besides the AC double decker trains, 18 other trains announced in the 2011-12...
05:44 PM, Mar 09, 2012
Since June last year, the Railway Board has been sitting on a Cabinet decision of February 2009, ratified in February 2010, to set up an electric engine plant at Madhepura and a diesel engine factory in Marhowra, both in backward areas of Bihar, in partnership with private companies. The Cabinet wanted international bids to be called. It approved the bid documents as well. Multinational corporations like Siemens, General Electric, EMD,...
05:01 PM, Mar 09, 2012
New Delhi: With the latest freight hike across the board, Railways aims to earn between Rs 15,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore in the next fiscal. The Railways has increased the freight rate in all commodities including foodgrains, fertiliser, cement, coal, and petroleum products ahead of Rail Budget. Effective from Tuesday, the hike varies from commodity to commodity ranging between 15 per cent to 35 per cent. While for coal...
08:14 PM, Mar 07, 2012
New Delhi: Railways on Tuesday withdrew four per cent exemption on fertiliser and foodgrain loading rates besides making a 10-15 per cent upward revision of other commodities ahead of Rail Budget. In 2010, Railways has increased freight rate by four per cent on some key commodities such as sugar and some petroleum products to meet rising fuel cost and higher wages. However, foodgrains and fertilisers were exempted from the increase...
07:09 AM, Mar 07, 2012
New Delhi: The cash-strapped railways are understood to have got an approval of Rs 25,000 crore as gross budgetary support (GBS) from Finance Ministry for the fiscal 2012-13. The national transporter, facing financial crisis due to various reasons, had asked for Rs 50,000 crore as GBS to carry out several rail infrastructure projects. Last year(2011), it had got Rs 20,000 crore as the GBS for 2011-12. "The approval for Rs...
05:27 PM, Mar 02, 2012
New Delhi: Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi will have to dig deep into his pocket for eliminating the thousands of unmanned level crossings across the country that are a huge safety challenge for the cash-strapped network. Unmanned level crossings account for around 40 percent of railway accidents. Trivedi, who would present the 2012-13 railway budget on March 14, is scrounging for funds, a whopping Rs 100,000 crore Indian Railways needs over...
05:53 PM, Feb 29, 2012
Ahead of the Railway Budget, Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi speaks exclusively to Network 18. ...
09:47 AM, Feb 28, 2012
New Delhi: Ahead of Minister Dinesh Trivedi's first Railway Budget on March 14, a high-level panel has advised focus on safety issues, rather than the populist practice of introducing new trains, saying the system was "bereft" of spare capacity. "No new trains should be introduced without adding adequate capacity for operation and maintenance," said the high-level panel on safety headed by former chairman of Atomic Energy Commission Anil Kakodkar in...
10:48 AM, Feb 27, 2012
New Delhi Drawing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's attention to the "miserable condition of the railways", the 1.2 million member-strong All India Railwaymen's Federation has appealed for a Rs.50,000 crore package to pull the national transporter out of its deep financial crisis. A copy of the letter written by AIRF general secretary Shiv Gopal Mishra, dated Feb 11, was released to media on Tuesday. "We want to draw your attention to...
02:46 PM, Feb 16, 2012
New Delhi, With passenger fares on a freeze for years and little money to expand the world's second largest railroad network under a single management, Minister Dinesh Trivedi has an unenviable task when he presents the annual Railway Budget on March 14. Poor financial management over the past few years has left Indian Railways staring at an earnings shortfall of Rs.7,000 crore despite gross budgetary support of Rs.20,000 crore last...
02:10 PM, Feb 13, 2012
New Delhi: During the 2010-11 Railway Budget speech Mamata Banerjee was in a tearing hurry. "Please listen or I will forget. I have too much to say and there is very little time. I am speaking like Rajdhani because there is very little time left," she told the Lok Sabha. Mamata Express is on a one-way journey to West Bengal. She was absent from Rail Bhawan, and sometimes from Parliament...
10:32 AM, Feb 24, 2011
Yadav alleges that under Mamata, railway is moving backwards. ...
12:23 AM, Feb 25, 2010
Mamata Banerjee presented the Rail Budget 2010 amidst interruptions. ...
11:09 PM, Feb 24, 2010
CNN-IBN's Diptosh Majumdar talks to the Rail Minister in an exclusive interview. ...
09:15 PM, Feb 24, 2010
