Survey finds Beas and Visakhapatanam stations rank top in cleanliness

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Railways. As per the Economic Survey 2018-19, the swachh rail portal had ranked, 'Beas' station first in India in the case of cleanliness among 'A' category stations and 'Visakhapatnam' tops the list among 'A1' category stations.

The survey was carried out based on a regular periodic third-party audit by the Quality Council of India and feedback from passengers. Clean toilets at platforms, clean tracks, and dustbins at stations were some of the criteria for judging railway stations for cleanliness.

The survey added that Indian Railways had initiated a major electrification program for electrifying 100 percent of its Broad Gauge network which would reduce the nation's dependence on imported diesel oil. As on 01 April 2019, Indian Railways has 35,488 Route Kilometre (RKM) of network commissioned on electric traction which constitutes 51.85 percent of total network and carries 64.50 percent of freight and 53.70 percent of coaching traffic. The pace of electrification accelerated and a total of 38,000 RKM has been identified for electrification by 2021.

The Economic Survey 2018-19 was presented by the Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs, Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament on Thursday. It stated that the category-wise break-up of consequential train accidents showed that the incident of train collisions had come down to zero in the year 2018-19 in Indian Railways and the incidents of derailments had decreased from 78 in 2016-17 to 46 in the year 2018-19.

The report also added that there had been an increase of 2.09 percent in the number of passengers carried by Indian Railways during 2017-18 as compared to 2016-17 and 0.64 percent increase in 2018-19 as compared to 2017-18.

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