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Maish Sisodia asks railway minister to help restart pilgrimage scheme
New Delhi
New Delhi
Delhi’s deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday met Union railway minister Piyush Goyal and urged him to make trains available to help Delhi government continue with its pilgrimage scheme for elderly residents.
“The minister has assured that trains will be made available as soon as rakes are available,” said Sisodia, after the meeting at Parliament House, where he was accompanied by the Aam Aadmi Party’s Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh.
On Wednesday, Sisodia said the “Mukhyamantri Tirth Yatra Yojana” had been suspended temporarily as the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) had cancelled trains scheduled from December 10 onwards due to non-availability of rakes.
The Northern Railways later confirmed the same, attributing the shortage of rakes owing to troop movements, weather condition and Assembly elections in Jharkhand.
The Mukhyamantri Tirth Yatra Yojana enables senior citizens in Delhi to go for pilgrimage in batches for which all travel, accommodation and food expenses are paid by the Delhi government. The government had 30 pilgrimage trips scheduled between December 10 and January 31, 2020. Since the scheme was rolled out around five months ago, it has covered around 30,000 pilgrims.
The routes covered under the scheme are: Delhi-Mathura-Vrindavan-Agra-Fatehpur Sikri-Delhi; Delhi-Haridwar-Rishikesh-Neelkanth-Delhi; Delhi-Ajmer-Pushkar-Delhi; Delhi-Amritsar-Wagah border-Anandpur Sahib-Delhi; and Delhi-Vaishno Devi-Jammu-Delhi.
