This is the sixth Vande Bharat train to be flagged by the prime minister in the past two months.
Posted on – Wed 12 Apr 23 at 03:04pm
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi waved the flag on Rajasthan’s first Vande Bharat Express on Wednesday.
Initiating the train between Ajmer and Delhi camps via video conference, the Prime Minister lamented that “for too long, the vital and basic needs of citizens such as railways have turned into a political arena”.
“India inherited a sizeable railway network at independence, but in the years following independence, political interests dominated the need for modernization,” Prime Minister Modi said.
“Politics are evident in the selection of the Minister of Railways, the announcement of the trains and even the recruitment. Land acquisition is done under the false pretense of working on the railways, many driverless crossings go on for a long time, cleanliness and safety are at a premium Secondary status,” he said, alluding to a land work scam, in which former railways minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family are under investigation.
Modi said: “After 2014, people elected a stable supermajority government. When the political pressure for concessions subsided, the situation improved, and the railways breathed a sigh of relief and sprinted to new heights.”
This is the sixth Vande Bharat train to be flagged by the prime minister in the past two months.
By the way, all three trains – Ajmer-Delhi Cantonment Vande Bharat Express, Rani Kamlapati-Hazrat Nizammuddin Vande Bharat Express and Secunderabad-Tirupati Vande Bharat Express – meet Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Tren The needs of these three vote-restricted states in Gana Pradesh.
All three states are scheduled to witness parliamentary elections later this year.
Meanwhile, Rajasthan’s railway budget has increased 14-fold since 2014, from Rs 7 billion in 2014 to more than Rs 9,500 crore this year, Modi said.
Addressing the gathering, Modi congratulated the brave state of Rajasthan for getting its first Vande Bharat train, which he said would not only ease travel between Jaipur and Delhi but would also boost Rajasthan’s Tourism as it will facilitate faster access to places of faith like Theerthraj Pushkar and Ajmer Sharif.
