Passengers may be able to travel between Delhi and Shimla on a single ticket in the days to come.
Welcoming a suggestion in this regard by a participant at the Exotica Tourism Summit organized by The Pioneer, a receptive Railways Minister Piyush Goyal on Wednesday said his Ministry will definitely work on the idea and will implement it soon.
Talking about efforts of Railways to promote tourism, the Minister said “We are running Ramayan Express which will connect sites associated with Lord Ram. Similarly, there is a train called Saamanta Express which will cover prominent places associated with Gautam Buddha and chief architect of the Constitution Dr BR Ambedkar.”
The idea is also to take the railways to Char Dham, he stressed during a Q&A session with The Pioneer Editor Dr Chandan Mitra.
The minister said that as a nation we all must act together to bring the excitement back for promoting India. In fact, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself suggested each of us to plan a visit to 15 places within the country in next three years, he said.
“India has a huge potential and I am sure this initiative will go a long way in promoting tourism,” he added.
The Minister also talked about energy potential of India, saying that the country is the fastest renewable energy growing and efforts are being made to make it a power surplus country.
After Prime Minister Modi took office, he has been particularly focused on the North-east to the extent that every minister was trying to visit the region twice or thrice in a year and every month three to four cabinet minister would actually go to north east, he said.
“That is the level of engagement the Government had with the North-east. I am happy to share the investment which has significantly ramped up on the railways and road front. We believe connecting all the faith of North-east with the mainland,” he added.
Goyal further said that train services are very critical and essential for the development of North-east. “Only four out of eight states are currently left out of services due to local pressure and problem. There are lots of trains running in Tripura but Arunachal Pradesh is not connected,” he said.
“I am delighted that all the eight states of the north east are aligned to the vision of the Prime Minister for faster infrastructure development and in next two and half years, all these four states will be connected to the railway map of India. We will be able to take the railway to every parts of the region right to extreme end to Bangladesh,” he said.
“We are also looking to working with Bangladesh to connect some parts so that a long circuit is cut off and actually travel through Bangladesh to other parts of the region,” the minister said.
While responding to a question by Dr Mitra on privatisation of railways, Goyal asserted that India Railways is the property of the people of India and shall always remain.
The minister also received a great round of applause when he shared to the gathering that there has not been even a single passenger death on Indian railway network from April 1, last year till date.
To a query from the audience, Goyal said that a lot has been done on improving the on-board food quality through use of artificial intelligence.
“Now you can track your food packets by scanning the bar coded meal boxes and gain access of the base kitchen where it has been prepared and packed. This can ben done through a rail app,” Goyal said.