After giving finishing touches to the Rail Budget, railway minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said it will be a 'passenger-friendly budget' dedicated to the common man of the country.
Rail Budget 2011-12 will be presented in Parliament on Friday. Without revealing any budget details, she said: "It will be people-friendly, passenger-friendly and country-friendly budget."
Speculations are rife that the budget may see some marginal increase in upper class AC fare with sleeper class fare remaining untouched.
Keeping the passengers' complaints in mind, the budget is likely to propose a slew of passenger-friendly measures like setting up of more Janahaar outlets at stations to provide quality food at reasonable rates.
The Budget could also find mention of mega base kitchens in the metros preparing 50,000 to 1 lakh meals per day for train passengers. This would be managed by railway itself as per the new catering policy, sources said.
The Budget could also announce launching off a new SMS-based service to lodge complaints against rail service by passengers. In order to provide clean linens to passengers, Railways are likley to announce setting up of mechanised laundry service at zonal levels.
The Rail Budget is likley to announce introduction of about 100 new trains including a dozen super fast Durontos.
The Budget comes at a time when the Railways are facing financial crunch with its operating ratio inching close to 100 level mark.
"So there will be a few measures for generation of more internal resources," sources said.
Mamata, facing Assembly elections in West Bengal in two months, could also announce a slew of projects for her state, including a rail link connecting the busy Howrah and Sealdah stations running through the densely populated central districts of Kolkata.
In order to promote cultural activities, railways are also planning to construct auditorium in Kharagpur, Jalpaiguri and Jabalpur.
Catering to the student community, she could also announce running of student special trains keeping in mind the travel requirement during examinations and trains with only bookings under Tatkal scheme.
With the Vision 2020 document of 2009 expected to serve as the guiding force, the budget is also expected to announce new measures to double the network of multiple tracks to 30,000 km. But the ensuing elections in West Bengal will tie down her arms on fare hikes.
Experts concede all the new trains Banerjee had promised in her two previous budgets for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had been flagged off and that passenger amenities had also improved during her tenure.
She had announced 122 new trains in 2009-10 and 54 more a year later.
But what has emerged as a big question mark is the financial health of the network - especially after her predecessor Lalu Prasad's claims of having dramatically turned the Indian Railways around that became matter of case studies in business schools like Harvard.
"For the first time in the history of India, today the minister of railways has achieved the impossible -- she actually made the railways bankrupt," Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader Sitaram Yechury told reporters in New Delhi.
The budget also cames against the backdrop of the share of Indian Railways in movement of goods, vis a vis truckers, falling from 24.07 per cent in 2001-02 to 20.89 per cent in 2008-09 and further to around 19 per cent last fiscal.
Officials in Indian Railways, however, said progress was, indeed, being made.
"Work for all the projects, for which the minister had laid the foundation stone or inaugurated, has started and it will be completed within the stipulated timeframe," said a spokesperson for Southern Railways.
"But as the projects are being executed by several agencies or under the public-private partnership model, it is not possible for us to provide progress report of every specific project in detail immediately," he said.
Indian Railways has a network of 64,099 route km to ferry 18.9 million passengers on 7,000 trains daily from 6,906 stations. It also runs 4,000 freight trains to carry 850 million tonnes of cargo.
The Trinamool Congress leader, last Friday, held a meeting with her two ministers of state Bharatsinh Solanki and K. H. Muniyappa and top officials led by Railway Board chairman Vivek Sahai to fine tune the budget, which is set to be presented in the Lok Sabha on Friday morning.