Railway Ministry launches new services

Sept 30, 2016: Minister of Railways Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu has launched a number of new services, which were part of Budget Announcements 2016-17.

The new services include liberalising station to station special freight rates policy; policy providing sub quota of 33 % to women within reserved categories for the allotment in catering units; policy giving preference to local domicile holders for commercial licenses at stations; new system of allocating vacant berths after final charting to wayside stations; launch of the new “Train at a Glance” and new Time Table effective from 1st October 2016.

Rajen Gohain, Minister of State for Railways was especially present on the occasion.

Some of the salient features of the proposed liberalised station to station special freight rates policy include eligibility of existing as well as new traffic; concession up to a maximum of 30% on the incremental traffic over and above the benchmark NTKM (Benchmark NTKM is defined as average NTKMs of corresponding periods of previous 24 months); concession may be granted for retention of traffic also up to maximum of 15%. In case of container traffic, Station to Station Rate (STS) discount upto maximum of 15% shall be given to commodities charged at Container Class Rate (CCR); STS scheme will be applicable for all terminals namely goods sheds, sidings, ports, CRTs, PFTOs etc.; the agreement shall be done for a maximum period of three years at a time and for not less than one year. Any change in freight rate (excluding imposition of any surcharge) shall not be applicable on the customer during the currency of the agreement or for one year, whichever is less.

Commodities excluded from STS are - All commodities with classification below Class-100, all commodities under Main Commodity Head “Coal & Coke”,iron ore (all types), Military traffic, POL and RMC.