india

Updated: Oct 04, 2019 23:02 IST

A passenger train that will have the shortest travel time between Delhi and Lucknow and will be operated by a subsidiary of the Indian Railways was flagged off on Friday, becoming the first rail service to be run by a private company.

Tejas Express will be operated by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a publicly listed company. The train was flagged off by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath in Lucknow on Friday.

“There is a need for similar trains between Agra, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Lucknow and other important cities,” Adityanath said at before the inaugural run.

“The UP government is ready to extend all possible support to the Railways and the IRCTC in expanding their horizons,” he added.

According to officials, this will be the fastest train on the Lucknow-Shatabdi route. “At present, the fastest Lucknow-Delhi train is Swarn Shatabdi, which takes over seven hours to reach its destination. Tejas would complete the journey in just 6 hours and 15 minutes,” said Ashwani Srivastava, chief regional manager Lucknow, IRCTC.

On the first day, 332 passengers boarded the train, which has a capacity of 700 travellers. Nine chair car and one executive chair car coaches were attached to the train on Friday.

The Delhi-bound train would leave at 6:10am and reach at 12:25pm, while the return service would depart the national capital at 3:35pm and reach Lucknow at 10:05pm. The train would have only two halts —at Kanpur and Ghaziabad – and would run six days a week, except Tuesday.

The rollout of Tejas Express is part of a privatisation that may include similar services in other routes. Some of the proposed routes include Delhi Mumbai, Delhi- Howrah, Secunderabad-Hyderabad, Secunderabad-Delhi, Delhi- Chennai, Mumbai- Chennai, Howrah- Chennai and Howrah-Mumbai.

“Railways incurs a loss of about ₹30,000 to ₹40,000 crore each year for running passenger services, giving them off to private players will help in reducing their losses definitely and bring down the operating ratio. The ministry is already conducting feasilbity on two routes with the Tejas train so they can gauge the viability of the concept,” former Railway Board chairman Surendra Singh Khurana told HT last week.