India News | Parliamentary Panel Members Convey Concern over Railways' Lack of Sufficient Internal Resources
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. Several members of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday expressed concern over the Railways' dependence on assistance from the Central government and its inadequate internal resources to meet its expenditures.
New Delhi, Feb 4 (PTI) Several members of Parliament's Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday expressed concern over the Railways' dependence on assistance from the Central government and its inadequate internal resources to meet its expenditures.
During a meeting of the committee, MPs from different parties quizzed officials of the Railway Ministry about their future plans to raise internal resources, more so as the share of coal in freight, which has traditionally made up for a sizeable share of its revenues, is expected to go down in future, the panel's chairperson and Congress MP K C Venugopal told PTI.
"There will be a detailed meeting on Railways' future plans in this regard," he said.
There was concern in the meeting about internal resources not being sufficient, he added.
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Venugopal noted that the Railways depended mainly on freight traffic for its revenue as the burden for generating more revenue cannot be passed onto the passengers by raising ticket price.
Even in freight, it depends substantially on coal, he said.
"We have to accept that the share of coal will come down drastically in future for issues like carbon emission and growth of alternative sources of energy," he added.
The agenda of Tuesday's meeting was "Oral Evidence of the representatives of the Ministry of Railways (Railway Board) on the Subjects 'State of Finances' and 'Financial Performance of Railway Commercial Undertakings' based on Chapter-1 and Chapter-3, respectively, of C&AG report".
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)