Railways record impressive growth in freight and passenger traffic

Kolkata, Apr 12 (UNI) Riding high on the crest of all round success Indian Railways which made a net profit of Rs 20,000 crore last year, achieved a new mile stone of nine per cent growth both in freight and passenger traffic for the period 2006-07.

This was informed today by Minister of State for Railways R Velu after a meeting with senior officials of the Eastern Railway during his two-day visit to the city.

Hailing the encouraging performance of Eastern Railway both in terms of carrying of freight and passengers in large numbers, the union minister said as a result the railway's earnings under these heads had gone up by Rs 1801 crore and Rs 1473 crore repectively during 2006-07.

Regarding additional number of passengers, carried by the ER during the last fiscal, Mr Velu said despite the reduction of size of in its overall zone a total number of 87 crore passengers travelled through the ER which was about four crore more passengers than the previous year.

Elaborating a number of major projects undertaken by the Railways in Eastern India, Mr Velu said that the Rs 2983 crore programme included construction of a 130 km long broad gauge line between Rampurhat and Dumka, a 83 km long track between Tarakeswar and Bishnupur and another 110 km line between Sultanganj and Deoghar besides the 72 km long new line between Deoghat and Dumka.

Earlier as a part of the ongoing Railway week, a total of 211 railway officer and staff members were presented various cash prizes and other performance related awards in presence of the minister.

In a separate programme, Mr Velu also inaugurated a new platform at Howrah station to accomodate longer express and mail trains.

UNI