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Railway's premium trains Shatabdi and Rajdhani ran late by around 30 per cent and 22 per cent respectively during the last two months, Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain informed Rajya Sabha.
He said that over April-June, the punctuality of trains was affected due to large scale maintenance work being carried out on the tracks.
He said railways took 4,60,56 hours for such work during April-June 2018 as against 4,11,627 hours during the same period in 2017. It is 11.89 per cent more than the last year.
"Various steps have been initiated to improve punctuality such as prioritisation of preventive maintenance of assets to minimize asset failures, capacity enhancement projects by construction of additional loop lines at stations, doubling, construction of third line corridors.
Besides, punctuality drives are launched from time to time and staff involved in train operations are sensitised," he said.
Among the worst performing zones in the said period, the punctuality of Rajdhani trains in the south east central zone was 30.77 per cent, while 54.93 per cent of Shatabdi trains ran on time in the eastern zone.
In the best performing zones, Rajdhani trains running in south central zone remained 100 per cent on time, while Shatabdis in the south eastern zone recorded a punctuality of almost 92 per cent.
