'Railways, Maha working on plan for Mumbai suburban commuters'

Thane (Maha), June 17: The Maharashtra government and the Railway Ministry are jointly working on a plan to ease the problems faced by suburban commuters in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Union Minister Manoj Sinha said on Friday,June 17.

"We realise that the suburban section of Mumbai faces a lot of problems and hence to overcome the same a plan is being worked out by the state (Maharashtra) government and the Railways, which should be in place in the next five or six months," Sinha told reporters here.

Sinha along with Union Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal participated in the 'Vikas Parva' programme, organised by BJP to celebrate the completion of two years of the Narendra Modi dispensation.

The Minister said it is a known fact that the Railways was facing several hurdles in its journey towards progress but "we have not given up and undertaken various measures to overcome them and bring in results".

He also said the budgetary allocation for Maharashtra has grown four times as compared to the previous government and that his Ministry is committed to provide better services.

"The recent conversion from DC to AC would save Rs 140 crore," Sinha said, adding the possibility of lending of wagons instead of the entire rake to the industries especially the small scale ones was being worked out.

The Minister further said till now there was no time table for the goods trains. "But now we have decided to monitor the same and come out with a specific running schedule and time table (for the goods trains).

We have flagged of one (goods) train from Delhi to Bengaluru which is supposed to take 70 hours of running time. Once the result of this is known, we will go in for other routes," Sinha added.

PTI