Confirmed seat on demand by 2020: Railways

New Delhi, Sep 12 (PTI) Gearing up to provide confirmedseat on demand, railways is expanding its network to cater tothe growing demand of passengers. "We want to make network in such a way that people shouldget reservation on demand by 2020. It is not possible in aday," Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha said heretoday. Currently, the waitlisted passengers’ list is long asthere is a wide gap between the availability of berths andnumber of passengers. Besides railways is facing heavycongestion in main trunk routes as 12,000 trains are run on66,000 km route daily across the country. Speaking on the sidelines of a function, Sinha said thereis a huge gap between passenger requirement and the existinginfrastructure. "Railway traffic has increased 20 times sinceIndependence and infrastructure has increased by 2.25 times.There is a big gap between passengers and infrastructure," hesaid. "Allahabd-Mughal Sarai sector is where there was maximumcongestion. There are 67 sectors in the country which facecongestion and work has started to decongest them," Sinhasaid. Highlighting the NDA government’s focus on infrastructuredevelopment, the MoS Railways said, "Average investment inIndian Railways was Rs 48,000 crore before May 2014, which hasbeen increased last year to Rs 1 lakh crore. An investmentplan worth Rs 8.5 lakh crore has been made (for the next fiveyears)." Defending the flexi-fare system in Premier service, hesaid, "Flexi plan has been implemented in 77 trains. Those whoare effected from this scheme are less than 0.2 per cent.Railways expense per kilometer is around 70 paise and it isrecovering 40 paise only." He further said, "This is required for working ofrailways and I feel who are availing better facilities and whocan afford to pay should pay for services. We have made nochanges in general (jan sadharan) and Garib Rath trains."(More) PTI PRS ARU IKA RGIKA