E-Paper
Bullet train in India, but only for Lalu
A train from Jaipur to New Delhi took a record 3 hours and 23 minutes to cover the 300 km stretch. Not because of any cutting edge technology, but because of a passenger: Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.
A train from Jaipur to New Delhi took a record 3 hours and 23 minutes to cover the 300 km stretch. Not because of any cutting edge technology, but because of a passenger: Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav.
The Jaipur Shatabdi and the Rajdhani Express do this stretch in 4 hours and 30 minutes and 5 hours and 20 minutes respectively. Lalu’s train, the MR Special, beat them hollow. Of course, it also helped that over a dozen trains were halted at various points to make way for the VIP ‘Bullet Train.’
The sprint happened on Thursday when Lalu was returning to Delhi from the Pink City where he had gone to inaugurate a double-stack container.
The train was a bit slower on its way to Jaipur, clocking 3 hours and 40 minutes. This was because it was halted at Bandikui station near Jaipur for a while.
Two stationmasters were suspended for halting the train “without justifiable reasons”. Sources told Hindustan Times that the train was halted for technical reasons. The return journey broke records perhaps because no stationmaster was willing to risk delaying the VIP superfast train.
