Railways waits for state government’s nod to restart passenger trains

The decision is awaited from the state government and from our headquarters, according to divisional railway manager (DRM), Pune Railway division

The Pune railway division is waiting for the go-ahead from the state government to resume Pune-Mumbai train services.

Pune railway station (Shankar Narayan/HT PHOTO)

“We are prepared to begin passenger train services, but the decision is awaited from the state government and from our headquarters,” said Renu Sharma, divisional railway manager (DRM), Pune Railway division.

She said freight and parcel trains were running during the Covid-19 lockdown restriction period.

“Our division operated 110 special parcel trains with 3,696 tonnes of essential commodities, medicines, medical equipment and also signed a special memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the postal department for door-to- door service,” she said.

Sharma said that the Pune division ran 144 Shramik trains to facilitate migrant workers, students, pilgrims, tourists and other stranded persons stranded, facilitating 180,000 passengers to 16 states from five originating stations (Pune, Uruli, Satara, Miraj and Kolhapur).

“We provided them with food packets, snacks and water bottles arranged by railways, state government and NGOs at the originating station and their food requirement was taken care at enroute stations till the destination,” Sharma said.

Saharsha Bajpai, additional divisional railway manager, presented the progress report on the electrification of Pune-Miraj-Kolhapur section which was delayed due to the Covid situation.

“The division has also executed many infrastructure and safety works which would have required major blocks with lot of traffic disruption during normal circumstances, like working on the overhauling of 24 level crossing gates and dismantling of the foot over bridge (FOB) at Talegaon and launching the girders of new FOBs at Kadethan and Chinchwad,” said Bajpai.