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The Railway Budget has announced a slew of IT initiatives. But most of the proposals are from the previous Congress-led regime, which the new Government plans to implement.
Announcements such as wi-fi services, digital reservation charts in railway stations, real-time tracking of trains, and next generation e-ticketing are already in place. The Railways Minister, DV Sadananda Gowda, has said these will be ‘revamped’.
According to analysts, with its recent proposals, the Railways wants to set its house in order.
For commuters, the Railway Minister said, ‘coin-operated automatic ticket vending machines’ will be experimented with and will improve system capabilities in e-ticketing to support 7,200 tickets per minute, against the 2,000 tickets per minute now. This will allow 1.20 lakh simultaneous users at any point in time.
Facility for online purchase of platform tickets and unreserved tickets will be provided. Combination parking-and-platform tickets will be launched.
An online facility to reserve railway retiring rooms will also be extended to all stations over the course of the year. For the freight business, online registration for booking wagons will be put in place in the next two months.
Further, a process for receiving electronic railway receipts will also be initiated during the year. There will be extension of logistics support to various e-commerce companies by providing designated pick-up centres at identified stations.
The Minister also announced providing education to children of Railway staff at remote locations through the Railtel optical fibre cable network. He said digitisation of GIS mapping of land assets of the Indian Railways will be done for better management and usage. It will help the Railways protecting its lands as well as leverage such properties to raise resources.
Resource mobilisation using land assets could be done through private participation.
The Railways also proposes to set up an Innovations Incubation Centre to harness the ideas generated by the staff of Indian Railways and convert them into practical solutions.
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