PRESS CONFERENCE: S S Khurana, Railway Board chairman

Railway Board chairman S S Khurana, while enumerating the key initiatives of the budget, was unable to give details on the nitty gritty of the new services announced on Friday, which he said would need to be worked out. Excerpts from a press conference in Rail Bhawan.

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Freight grew by 5 per cent last year but you have now set a target of 5.5 per cent. How will it be achieved in the slowdown?
We could not achieve our freight target in the third and fourth quarter of 2008-09. The economy is looking up now. June freight loading rose 9 per cent. So, I believe we will be able to surpass the target.

There was news that projects from Bihar were being shifted to West Bengal.
No project is being and will be shifted to West Bengal. They will stay where they have been planned.

How aggressively do you plan to augment track capacity and have you decided on the equity in the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode?
Capacity is a major issue with Indian Railways. Even the budget has announced plans to augment capacity. Nothing has been decided on equity in the PPP mode.

Do you plan to introduce new rolling stock for the Yuva trains?
This will be a train with only seating accommodation and would be an all-day train. The details of the service are still being worked out but we expect it to be popular.

Mamata Banerjee in her Budget speech said of the provision of Rs 3,400 crore resource mobilisation through PPP, Rs 3,300 crore did not materialise. Why?
That statement was from our earlier experiences, where our contractors walked away from the project. The minister had announced that a committee would work out the structure of the PPP initiatives.

Are you also taking the multi-functional complexes and Adarsh stations on PPP?
We are still looking at these initiatives and the mode will be decided subsequently.

Will the revised Tatkal structure lead to a fall in your revenues?
The Tatkal quota is 12.5 per cent of all berths. With this revision, it would become cheaper and increase the number of people buying such tickets; hence, increasing our earnings.

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