IRCTC survey asked passengers about toilets, linen, housekeeping to rank trains

The results of the first-ever ‘Total Cleanliness Survey’ of the Railways are now out, and the winners are North Western Railway (NWR), which topped the zonal rankings in the ‘Premium’ category trains, and Southern Railway, which came out on top in the ‘Other than Premium’ category’ trains.

The survey covered 209 trains and was conducted by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation. Its aim was to assess the progress of the ‘Swachh Rail-Swachh Bharat’ mission and promote healthy competition among trains.

While the NWR got an average score of 860 out of 1,000 in the ‘Premium’ category, South Central Railway finished at the bottom with an average of 658. Southern Railway topped the ‘Other than Premium’ category’, with the highest average of 736 among the 16 railway zones, while the East Central Railway was the dirtiest in this group, with an average of 572. The ‘Premium’ trains included the Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto, Tejas and Gatiman while Sampark Kranti, Intercity, Jan Shatabdi and other Mail and Express trains were in the ‘Other than Premium’ category.

The overall score of the Rajdhani trains was 787. This included separate scores for process audit, direct observation, and passenger feedback. Out of the 23 Rajdhanis surveyed, the Mumbai Rajdhani emerged on top with 875, followed by those linking Bhubaneswar and Sealdah.

Among 26 Shatabdi trains, the Pune-Secunderabad Shatabdi, with 916, finished on top, followed by the Howrah-Ranchi and Delhi-Kanpur Shatabdis. The Kochuveli-Chandigarh Sampark Kranti was the cleanest among the 20 Sampark Kranti trains, with a score of 754. The KSR Bengalaru-Ernakulam train topped among 20 Intercity services.

Opinion of on-board passengers was sought on toilets, housekeeping, linen and general cleanliness.

A total of 15,360 passengers from 16 zones, took part in the survey.