The East Coast Railway (ECoR) would receive the most prestigious Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Best Zonal Railway Shield-2020 for all-round performance among all the zones in the Indian Railways. The ECoR would receive this shield for the third time. Earlier, it had bagged the shield in 2008-09 and 2015-16.
This shield instituted in the memory of great freedom fighter and former Union Minister Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant is given every year to a zonal railway for the best performance. Railway Minister Piyush Goyal would hand over this shield to the ECoR during the upcoming Railway National Award Function. This award is based on the criteria of selection on the basis of loading of revenue and earnings, goods traffic, punctuality of trains, passenger traffic, consequential train accidents per million train KMs, capacity utilisation of repair workshop out-turn, coach performance, energy consumption, utilisation of motive power and railway stock, operating ratio, economy in manpower, working of signal/telecom equipments, progress of track renewal, stock utilisation, performance of track machine, ticket checking, timely completion of major works, earnings and scrap disposal etc.
The ECoR loaded 200.85 million tonnes of freight in 2019-2020 FY, which was an increase of 4.73 percent over last financial year. Besides, ECoR would receive traffic transportation shield, accounts & financial management shield and sales management shield at the function.