Rail minister Piyush Goyal works from hospital, trains start running on time

New Delhi: With Ministry of Railways facing criticism over punctuality of trains, Union Minister Piyush Goyal has taken the arduous task of maintaining the timely running of trains right from the hospital bed where he has been admitted since November 27.

According to sources close to Goyal, the minister himself is taking stock of trains' movements by calling general managers from the hospital. "It's the outcome of the minister's efforts that punctuality of almost all east-bound trains has improved in the last few days. Premiums and express trains are running as per schedule with some trains are getting delayed by some hours," the source said.

According to a Railways official, the punctuality of almost all trains have 'improved' as the trains which were running late by over 4-5 hours are now reaching their destinations within the stipulated time and in some cases, the delay time has been reduced to 30 minutes or 45 minutes.

Reportedly, most of the east-bound trains were getting delayed due to poor visibility or some other technical glitches in November. The situation had become so dismal that Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains were getting delayed for over 2-5 hours, while Express trains were delayed for over 20 hours.

The Rejendra Nagar Terminal-New Delhi Sampoorna Kranti Express was delayed by over 24 hours while the Sitamarhi-Anand Vihar Lichavi Express was delayed by over 25 hours in mid-November when about eight trains were cancelled and over 69 delayed due to bad weather conditions.

Notably, Goyal has been admitted to a private hospital in Mumbai on November 27 after he complained of uneasiness.

Indian Railways runs 12,617 trains carrying over 23 million passengers daily connecting more than 7,172 stations covering a route length of more than 64,460 km.

The Railways have initiated various measures aimed at improving punctuality of trains and put in place the IT-enabled Integrated Coaching Management System (ICMS) for online monitoring of punctuality of passenger-carrying trains.

The Railways has launched text message service to notify passengers of Rajdhani and Shatabdi about the delay of their scheduled trains. Currently, the SMS messages are being sent to wait-listed passengers after the confirmation of their berths.