Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday pitched for a semi-bullet train on the Agra-Varanasi route as he flagged off the Tejas Express, the country's first "private" train run by its subsidiary IRCTC, between Lucknow and New Delhi.
He said the state government will bear the cost of the land if the railways take up the Agra-Varanasi project and suggested similar trains to Allahabad and Gorakhpur. The commercial run of the new Tejas Express starts on Saturday.
The train cuts the time travelled between the two cities to six hours 15 minutes from the six hours 40 minutes taken by the Swarna Shatabdi, currently the fastest train on the route.
"It is the first corporate train of the country. I congratulate the first batch of passengers travelling in it and hope such initiatives are taken to connect other cities as well," Adityanath said.
"We are constructing an expressway between Agra, Lucknow and Varanasi. Half of the work is over and the project will be completed next year, he said, suggesting that a semi-high speed train could also be run on this route. If the railway board takes any initiative on this, the state will bear the cost on the Agra-Varanasi route, he said.
He said such initiatives can also be taken on other routes, including Lucknow-Allahabad and Lucknow-Gorakhpur. "I thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Railway Minister Piyush Goel for giving the first corporate train from the biggest state to Delhi, he said.
This is a competitive era and there is a need for environment friendly public transport to be accepted in society," Adityanath said. When mobile phones were first introduced, the charges were astronomical but now every person has it, he said. This happened due to healthy competition," he added.
Indian Railways, Adityanath said, connects the entire country, providing journeys that are safe, cheap and environment-friendly. "We need healthy competition to provide better facilities to people," he added.
The Tejas Express will leave Lucknow at 6.10 am and reach New Delhi railway station at 12.25 pm. On its return journey, the train will leave Delhi at 3.35 pm and reach Lucknow at 10.05 pm.
Adityanath said air tickets are expensive and there was no facility earlier to reach Delhi in the afternoon and return to Lucknow at night. The Tejas Express will have only two halts Kanpur and Ghaziabad. It will run on all days of the week, except Tuesday.
If this experiment of handing over certain operations to IRCTC is successful, the railways will make way for private operators to run trains in India, officials said.
The Railway Board has already asked zonal railways to consider the feasibility of running private trains on 50 key routes, including Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah.
The Tejas Express is a premium version of the Shatabdi Express category of air-conditioned chair-car trains.
The new IRCTC Tejas Express train has several new features. In a first, passengers will be paid for any delay on an hourly basis. Also, each passenger will get free Rs 25 lakh insurance.
The Tejas Express ticket is priced at Rs 1,280 for AC chair car passengers and Rs 2,450 for executive chair car. However, due to dynamic pricing, the costliest Tejas ticket till now is Rs 4,325.
Swarna Shatabdi Express fares are Rs 970 for chair cars and Rs 1,935 for AC 1A. This train, too, has dynamic pricing.
Meanwhile, Railway unions on Friday protested against the IRCTC's Tejas Express, the country's first "private" train, flagged off by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in Lucknow.
The All India Railway Men's Federation (AIRF) said it is observing the day as 'virodh diwas' across the network against the first "private" train Tejas and the railway board's decision to give another 150 trains to the private sector.
Terming the launch of the Tejas express on Friday as a "black day", members of the railway unions carrying banners and shouting slogans gathered in front of the divisional railway manager's office here.
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