Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday offered to facilitate land for a fast track railway corridor on Agra-Varanasi route if the Railways announced more Tejas Express-like trains for Uttar Pradesh.
The Chief Minister made this announcement while flagging off Tejas Express, the country’s first private train run by Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways, here on Friday morning.
“We are constructing an expressway between Agra, Lucknow and Varanasi. Half of the work is over and the project will be completed next year,” he said, suggesting that a semi-high speed train could also be run on this route.
“If the Railways Board takes any initiative on this, the state will bear the cost on the Agra-Varanasi route,” he said.
He said such initiatives could also be taken on other routes, including Lucknow-Allahabad and Lucknow-Gorakhpur.
“I thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal for giving the first corporate train from the biggest state to Delhi,” he said.
“This is a competitive era and there is a need for environment-friendly public transport to be accepted in society,” the Chief Minister said.
He said when mobile phones were first introduced, the charges were astronomical but now every person has it. “This happened due to healthy competition,” he added.
The Chief Minister said the Indian Railways connects the entire country, providing journeys that are safe, cheap and environment-friendly. “We need healthy competition to provide better facilities to people,” he added.
The Chief Minister said the Tejas Express had aeroplane-like facilities for passengers.
The Tejas Express will run between Charbagh railway station in Lucknow to New Delhi. It will reach Delhi via Kanpur and Ghaziabad and run on all days of the week, except Tuesday, from October 6.
Yogi Adityanath said that now passengers could reach Delhi from Lucknow in only 6 hours 15 minutes. He hoped that many new measures would be undertaken to link other cities with such trains.
UP ministers Ashutosh Tandon, Ashok Bajpai, Kaushal Kishore, Satish Chandra Mishra, Sanjay Seth, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Kumar Awasthi, Information Director Shishir, Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav, IRCTC CMD MP Mal, General Manager of North Eastern Railway Rajeev Aggarwal and several railway officials including CRM Ashwini Srivastava of IRCTC were present on the occasion.
The train will leave Lucknow at 6:10 am and reach Kanpur at 7:20 am, Ghaziabad at 11:43 am and Delhi at 12.25 pm. On its return journey, the train will leave Delhi at 3:35 pm and reach Ghaziabad at 4:09 pm, Kanpur at 8:35 pm and Lucknow at 10.05 pm. It will have only two halts — Kanpur and Ghaziabad.
There will be facility of booking tickets for the train till five minutes prior to departure. The booking facility for the train will be available 60 days ahead of the journey.
The passengers travelling on the train will be entitled to Rs 25 lakh insurance free of cost.
All the coaches of Tejas Express will be equipped with CCTV cameras. There is also smoke and fire detection system. It has censor-based automatic doors, and there is also GPS-based passenger information display system on the train. There is facility of tea-coffee vending machine and free Wi-Fi.
The passengers taking the train from Lucknow will be served tea and cookies at 6:30 am and heavy breakfast at 8 am. At 11 am, the passengers will get tea, coffee, juice and light snacks.
Likewise, passengers taking the train from Delhi will be served tea and snacks at 4 pm and meal at 7 pm.
