The Minister of Railways Shri Pawan Kumar Bansal today presented Railway Budget 2013.
Key Highlights of Railway Budget 2013 :
- Introduction of 67 new Express trains,26 passenger trains, 5 Mainline Electrical Multiple Units (MEMUs) services and 8 DEMU services while presenting the Railway Budget 2013-14 in Parliament today.
- Superfast charges and Tatkal fee to be hiked.
- Ticket reservation and cancellation charges to be hiked.
- Railways working to provide free WIFI service in selected trains.
- Aadhaar Card will be used for booking and validating passenger details at the time of railway ticket reservation.
- The Railway Minister also announced launching of Book-a-meal scheme to provide multiple choice of meals through SMS or email.
- Coin/currency operated ticket vending machines will be introduced during 2012-13.
- Rail Bandhu on-board magazines will be distributed on Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and Duronto trains.
- The Railway Budget 2012-13 also proposes setting up of AC Executive lounges at important stations.
IT Initiatives
- Aadhar’ to be used for various passenger and staff related services.
- Internet ticketing from 0030 hours to 2330 hours.
- e-ticketing through mobile phones.
- Project of SMS alerts to passengers providing updates on reservation status.
- Covering larger number of trains under Real Time Information System.
- Next-Gen e-ticketing system to be rolled out capable of handling 7200 tickets per minute against 2000 now & 1.20 lakh users simultaneously against 40,000 now.
Rail Tourism
- Launching multi-modal travel package in cooperation with Jammu & Kashmir state government.
- Issuing ‘Yatra Parchis’ to pilgrims travelling by rail to Mata Vaishno Devi Shrine at the time of railway ticket booking.
- Introduction of an educational tourist train with concessional fares – ‘Azadi Express’ – to connect places associated with freedom movement.
- Introduction of executive lounge at 7 more stations, namely, Bilaspur, Visakhapatnam, Patna, Nagpur, Agra, Jaipur and Bengaluru