'More production of Vande Bharat and Tejas type coaches to accommodate waiting list passengers'

New Delhi: To check waiting list passengers are not dropped, Indian Railways has focused on the production of Vande Bharat, Tejas, LHB, Vistadome types of coaches in trains. It has invited bids for private participation to induct 151 trains (rakes) over 12 clusters through Public-Private Partnership (PPP).

In a written reply to Rajya Sabha on Friday, rail minister Ashwini Vaishnaw informed that about five crore dropped waiting list passengers were observed in 2019-20 due to lack of capacity.

"The existing passenger train services shall not be affected by the operation of train services through PPP mode and these will be in addition to the existing train services. The list containing details of these train services spread across the entire Indian Railway network had been uploaded on http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/IndicativeRoutesfor12clusters.pdf.." the reply mentions.

The financial bids for all the 12 clusters for the PPP project have been opened on July 23, the last year. The bids are under financial evaluation.

However, the minister also clarified that there is no proposal for the privatization of Indian Railways.

Keeping eye on the current pandemic situation and to contain the spread of COVID, the Indian Railways will keep discontinuation on all regular passenger trains and on basis of the occupancy and waitlist position of the special trains- it operates "Clone trains", on routes where traffic demand is high, the minister also mentioned in another reply in the Upper House. The regular passenger train services are suspended till March 23 last year.

The ministry is also in talks with the state governments and GMs of respective zones over the situation and demand of rail services, a ministry source said.