The Rajya Sabha has approved Railway Appropriation Bill 2016-17 and returned it to Lok Sabha. Replying to the short debate on it, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said, one of the biggest challenges for the Railways is to match its commercial operations to meet social obligations. He said, it is working on seven different missions including zero accident, Raftaar to increase the speed of trains and to increase capacity.
He said, the allocation for doubling the tracks in this year’s budget has been substantially increased to meet the requirements. Mr. Prabhu said, the Railways carried out doubling of 973 kms of rail tracks across the country and conducted gauge conversion of over 1,000 kilometres in 2015-16.