Rail Budget to be presented today

BANGALORE, INDIA: Railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav will present the fifth Railway Budget in the parliament today.

Having steered the loss-making railway into the profit tracks, the minister had endeared himself to the masses.

And this time around also the minister is likely to present a populist budget, especially because of the fact that election is round the corner.

Previous railway budgets had many IT initiatives such as the introduction of Enterprise Resource Program (ERP) in railway production units, reduction in e-ticket charges and introduction of train enquiry call centers in all four regions of the country.

Presenting the Railway Budget for 2007-`08 the railway minister had said, “IT applications will be deployed to increase passenger and freight earnings, improve the image of the railways in the eyes of the customer, reduce operating costs, ensure effective utilization of human and physical resources and to help the top management in arriving at long-term policy decisions by developing MIS & LRDSS.”

This year, however, being the last budget for the year and with the elections round the corner, analysts feel that it is more going to be a budget for the common man.

There are chances that Internet services may be introduced in more trains and optical fiber communication (OFC) network may be expanded through RailTel Corporation of India, a public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Railways.

The OFC network supports about 2900 railway stations covering 30000 route kilometers in the country covering 45000 route kilometers to provide bandwidth and multi-media services.

RailTel data connectivity at every railway station on the OFC route is already enabling large-scale opening of Passenger Reservation System (PRS) and Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) facilities thus benefiting common people even at remote stations.

Considering that Indian economy is growing at such a fast pace this year’s budget would be closely observed by foreign economies.