Twelfth Plan outlay for Railways fixed at Rs5,19,221 crore

The government has finalised an outlay of Rs5,19,221 crore for the Railways in the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017), including gross budgetary support of Rs1,94,221 crore, internal generation of Rs1,05,000 crore and extra budgetary resources of Rs2,20,000 crore.

The ministry of railways has proposed an outlay of around Rs5,48,000 crore in the Twelfth Plan period, but the Planning Commission has pruned it to Rs5,19,221 crore.

The plan panel decides on the outlay for different sectors keeping in view the total availability of resources and requirement of resources in different sectors.

Giving this information in the Rajya Sabha today, minister of state for railways Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said in a written reply that for financing the 12th Plan outlay, adequate gross budgetary support, mobilisation of extra budgetary resources, including bonds and public-private partnership (PPP) in identified areas and mobilisation of internal resources would be necessary, adding that all efforts are being made for mobilising these resources.

The Railways, the minister stated, has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for jointly developing bio-toilets. He said a total of 1,563 bio-toilets have already been installed in coaches up to March 2013 for field trials. It is planned to convert all coach toilets on Indian Railways to bio-toilets after success of trials, he added.

On successful development of the bio-toilets, the Railways will undertake a time bound proliferation plan, he said.

Despite the outcome of the fitment trials, exigency of their usage pattern and other service conditions, the minister said the Railways has planned to induct all new coaches fitted only with environment friendly toilets/bio-toilets from 2016-17. The entire fleet of passenger coaches will have eco-friendly toilets by 2021-22 provided that there is no technical or operational setback, he added.

Besides, he stated, the Railways will promote battery-operated vehicles at railway stations through the commercial publicity route to carry disabled, old and sick passengers free of cost. These vehicles have already been introduced at Mumbai CST, Mumbai Central, Nagpur, Pune, Solapur, Sealdah, Howrah, Visakhapatnam, New Delhi, Delhi, Chennai Central, Chennai Egmore, Tiruchirapalli, Madurai, Salem, Secunderabad, Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Raipur, Durg, Bilaspur, Bengaluru, Yeshwantpur, Mysore and Kota station.

Meanwhile, he said, the separate reservation counters earmarked for ladies, senior citizens, former members of Parliament, members of legislative assembly, physically handicapped, accredited journalists, freedom fighters, are linked to the demand per shift of not less than 120 tickets. In case, there is no justification for earmarking of exclusive counter for any of these categories of persons, including ladies/physically challenged persons, one or two counters depending upon total demands will be earmarked for dealing with the reservation requests of all these categories of persons.

Instructions are also being issued that at reservation offices, which have not been computerised and where separate counters are not in existence for ladies, female passengers should not be compelled to join the general queues and be attended to separately at the same counter as for general passengers, he added.