The railways department is unlikely to carry out any considerable changes in the passenger fares in Rail Budget for its 8th year in succession as over 100 new trains could be declared including a number of non-stop Durontos. Rail Budget 2011-12 will be presented in the Lok Sabha tomorrow and this may show a mention of the mega base kitchens in metros making 50,000 to 100,000 meals every day for train passengers. This will be managed by the railway department itself according to the latest catering policy, according to the sources.
Mamata Banerjee, the Rail Minister will be facing the Assembly elections in just two months in West Bengal and may even declare the slew of projects for her own state like the rail link that will connect Howrah and Sealdah through densely populated districts of Kolkata.
Rail Budget 2011-12
Helping the student community, she might even declare running of some student special trains keeping in view the travel needs during exams and trains with the booking under Tatkal scheme.
Banerjee might even announce measures for stepping up the work on dedicated Rail Freight Corridors program that is lagging behind its actual schedule while national transporter will maintain dynamic pricing policy in the freight. A multi mode transportation system between Secinderabad and Hyderabad is likely to be mentioned in Rail Budget 2011-2012 along with the capacity enhancement of Mumbai suburb rail system.
More of DMU trains will also be announced in the Budget for north east areas as Railways propose to have latest Duronto trains from Guwahati to Howrah and New Delhi. Further, with the view to attract more investment, Railways are also likely to declare few new schemes to involve the private players for expansion of the network.
