Piyush Goyal, Yadav rap CR GM for not updating Rail Drishti data

Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal

Outgoing railway minister Piyush Goyal and Railway Board chief Vinod Kumar Yadav have blasted Central Railway (CR) for being a dampener on the railway ministry's efforts of bringing in transparency and enhancing the image of Indian Railways, by not sending regular updates to Rail Drishti web portal.

The railways had launched the portal earlier this year - which has received more than 3.11 crore hits - for transparency and passenger updates. On May 24, Goyal and Yadav wrote a hard-hitting letter to CR's General Manager D K Sharma, saying that the CR team has been ignoring reminders from both of them to send regular updates.

"It has been a matter of great concern that data on e-Drishti was not being updated regularly despite regular instructions from the Railway Minister and Railway Board chief," it states.

The letter mentions that Goyal had expressed displeasure about images of stations for areas like the circulating area, façade, platforms, waiting rooms, toilets, signage, etc. not being uploaded by Mumbai and Nagpur divisions of CR. A review of the updated data is going to be conducted on June 4.

Yadav, however, acknowledged that CR's general performance, and in service-related areas like punctuality and cleanliness in particular had improved in 2018-19, and congratulated Sharma for the same, but added that it was important to bring these works to the notice of the common man, for which the portal had been created. Despite repeated attempts, CR officials refused to comment on the letter.

Glimpse into Rail Drishti

Services: View and avail the status of any digital service offered among PNR, complaint, tender and freight-related enquiries.

Track trains: Passengers can track any train on the Indian Railways network.

IRCTC kitchens: Live feeds from the cameras installed in various IRCTC base kitchens can be viewed.

Grievances: Shows status of grievances reported via Complaint Management System (COMS).

Station images: Monitors the progress of some of the major initiatives launched by railways and displays images of various stations before and after the work has been completed.

Shramik Kalyan: Provides information about the unorganized sector working with railway contractors. The amount of wages distributed to the casual workers is available on the dashboard.

Freight and Passenger earnings: These individual sections have data on earning from freight across the rail network, as well as revenue from passenger reservations. Further, in Unreserved Ticketing, the performance of suburban, non-suburban, and mobile bookings can be viewed.

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