The Government right from the very beginning has been working relentlessly for providing all basic amenities of life by developing a number of infrastructural projects, which are really appreciable. In a major initiative, Mission Raftaar has been launched, as a ‘Mission’ envisaged for speed enhancement and to achieve a target of doubling average speed of freight trains and increasing the average speed of Superfast /mail/Express trains by 25 Km per hour and not a standalone ‘Project(s)’. The overall allocation and utilization of funds under Mission Raftaar can’t be quantified. While giving reply to a query in Rajya Sabha, the Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronic & Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnaw said that CAG report tabled in budget session 2022 has analyzed the punctuality and travel time in train operations in Indian Railways as a whole. Mission Raftaar is only one of the documents used as Audit criteria for preparation of report. Speeding up of trains is a constant endeavour and a continuous process on Indian Railways which is dependent on constant optimization of the investments made by Railways in modernization of technology, high powered locos, modern coaches and better tracks. To this end Indian Railways are inter alia proliferating Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches which have higher speed potential, converting passenger trains operating with conventional coaches into MEMU services (which have higher acceleration/deceleration owing to distrusted power). As a part of ‘Mission Raftaar’ and during the period 2015-16 and 2021-22, 414 passenger train services have been converted into MEMU services. Indian Railway is constructing more than 3000 Km of Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), which would enable freight trains to run at speed of 100 Km per hour. There is marked improvement in average freight train speed. During financial year 2016-17 to financial year 2020-21, Average speed of freight train has increased from 23.7 Km/hr to 41.2 Km/hr.
