IT, telecom figure high in Railway Budget

NEWDELHI: Nitish Kumar, Union minister for Railways, has earmarked Rs 689 crore for Signaling and Telecommunications in the Annual Railways Budget FY03-FY04.

It may be recalled that RailTel Corporation was established in 2002 as a 100 percent subsidiary under the Ministry of Railways to cater to the communication needs of the captive business and to exploit its existing communication backbone commercially to generate additional revenue.

Kumar has also proposed to review the existing accounting policies and practices and to introduce fully computerized accounting and MIS so as to generate costing data on passenger and freight services on commercial lines.






Besides, a bio-diesel fuel plan, and the introduction of computerized non-destructive testing of bridges and a new computerized Coaching Operation Information Systems (COIS) are on the anvil.





The PSU is expected to double its earnings to Rs 12.5 crore from Rs 5.22 crore in the current fiscal, by leasing of bandwidth and other telecom infrastructure.





More importantly, some 150 key cities and some 1,500 stations are expected to be connected on Optical Fiber Network (OFCN) in two phases as part of a RailTel project. The expected date of completion for it is the end of the year.





RailTel is also introducing Internet kiosks at the New Delhi railway station as a pilot project and has plans of another pilot project of providing Internet service on trains during the next financial year.