The Indian Railway Ministry is planning to introduce the Vande Bharat Express, a semi-high-speed train, to run at speeds of up to 200 kilometres per hour. The ministry is looking to increase the number of trains under the Vande Bharat project from the current 50 to about 400 during the next financial year.
The new trains will replace existing Rajdhani and Duronto services. They will also provide better connectivity to smaller towns in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The Vande Bharat Express will initially run on selected routes and will later be extended across the entire network. The Union Cabinet approved the plan to set up the Vande Bharat Project in August 2018.
The project is being implemented by the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL). In April 2019, NHSRCL signed a contract with Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, for manufacturing the coaches for the Vande Bharat trains.
This move comes after the government decided to scrap two old trains – Janani Express and Garib Rath – due to poor performance. Budget estimates suggest the cost of running these trains would be Rs 2,500 crore annually.
During last year budget, The Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, In her speech she mentioned about the government’s plan to introduce around 400 new Vande Bharat Express trains in the next five years. In his presentation, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said that the government has allocated Rs 7,000 crore for modernising railway stations and rolling stock. He added that the government is planning to build 50 km of rail track every day during the current fiscal.
The new train will run between Delhi and Varanasi via Lucknow, Kanpur, Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Bareilly, Moradabad, Jhansi, Bhopal, Indore, Ratlam, Ujjain, Nagda, Jabalpur, Bilaspur, Raipur, Ranchi, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Kolkata, Howrah, Chennai, Coimbatore, Tirupati, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Salem, Kochi, Thrissur, Kozhikode, Mangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad, Nashik, Kolhapur, Thane, Vapi, Surat, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Jaipur, Patna, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Guwahati, Siliguri, Shillong, Imphal, Guwahati and New Jalpaiguri.