Railway services improving despite budget crunch: Kharge

Kanpur: Union Rail Minister Mallikarjun Kharge on Tuesday said Railways is continuously improving its services to passengers and augmenting safety features despite a budget crunch.

"A big chunk of the budget allotted to the Railways is spent on the salary of employees and the rest goes to the new rail line being laid in Jammu and Kashmir and other important projects. "Only the quarter of the whole budget is left for other projects in different parts of the country," the Railway Minister said after flagging off the first direct train between Kanpur and Amritsar here today. He said that his ministry is working on several projects to improve the safety and provide more facilities to passengers. The High Speed Rail Corporation is constituted to move forward in the direction of the ambitious high speed rail projects, he added. Talking about the Food security scheme of UPA Government, he said that the Centre wants to ensure that everyone should get basic food to eat, even if adjustments have to be made in other projects. Earlier today, local MP and Union Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said that the new Kanpur-Amritsar train is the ninth train to connect the city to different parts of the country during his tenure as a lawmaker from the area. There are already 8 trains running from Kanpur to other parts of India, he said. He rued that despite being one of the largest city in Uttar Pradesh neither Central nor State Government took interest in its development. He, however, urged the Railway Minister to allot more developmental projects to Kanpur. Later, the Railway minister reviewed several other projects being undertaken by his ministry here.