Goa calling for Vande Bharat; govt aims century run for coveted trains this year
By Our Special Correspondent
New Delhi, June 2: While self-propelled Vande Bharat train will finally come to Goa on Saturday to connect Mumbai, Union Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw has said that by the end of this year a century mark for the trainset will be achieved. At the BJP headquarters, Vaishnaw said 200 cities will be connected by next year.
“We are aiming for 100 Vande Bharat trains this year. We are ramping up capacities fast. Work on electrification is taking place to meet the requirements,” said Vaishnaw on the sidelines of the commemoration of the ninth anniversary of the Narendra Modi government at the Ashoka Hotel in the national capital last week.
The Ministry of Railways has awarded several contracts for manufacturing Vande Bharat trains, which include a number of consortiums led by foreign as well as domestic firms. The Railways is going big with the flagging off of the Vande Bharat trains, as the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre seeks to ride the branded rail services for the next year’s Lok Sabha elections.
Some of the domestic firms which have bagged contracts for manufacturing of Vande Bharat trains are buzzing on the stock market, multiplying several times this year. Titagarh Wagons, which is partnering BHEL for manufacturing Vande Bharat, has been touching new summits every other day, with the scrip gaining another seven per cent on Friday to hit an all-time high of ₹ 377, which translates into a gain of over 283 per cent in one year. Similar has been gains in Rail Vikas Nigam Limited.
However, the Ministry of Railways is notorious to give ambitious targets, only to shift the goal posts later by giving explanations of hardships in execution of the works.
Incidentally, until the Ministry of Railways rolled out the first Vande Bharat train, indigenously designed at the Integrated Coach Factory Chennai, the national transporter had been planning for semi-high speed trains to run on the routes currently being services by Shatabdi trains. Vande Bharat trains are being launched on the routes of Shatabdi trains.
The Goa-Mumbai Vande Bharat train will cut the travel time by one hour to seven and a half hours. It may be mentioned that semi-high speed trains average almost 150 kms per hour speed.
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