CHENNAI, May 1: The Railway Board has dropped proposals for introduction and increase in frequency of a few important trains from Tamil Nadu to the northern sectors. The move has gone off without any protest from the MPs who represent the state. Chief Minister M Karunanidhi too has not taken up the cause of the state with the Centre as yet.

The Board had agreed at the Time-Table Committee meeting for clearing them based on the report prepared by Southern Railway. These proposals had also been included in the Railway budget.

As per the time-table which has now been finalised, the proposal to introduce the bi-weekly Madurai-Jammu Tawi express from June 1997 has been dropped. This train would have been a vital connection from the southern state to the northern state.

The proposal to increase the frequency of the Nagercoil-Mumbai express from a tri-weekly to four days a week train following demand from passengers and based on traffic potential studies too has been dumped. The Southern Railway had initially recommended that the express be made a daily. Another important proposal to introduce an inter-city express between Coimbatore and Bangalore has been shelved.Instead the Board has directed the Southern Railway to introduce a Shatabdi Express. Union Railways Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had announced the introduction of a Shatabdi Express in the section during the inauguration of the Salem-Bangalore broad gauge section. But in the budget presented in Parliament, the minister had announced only an inter-city express in view of the findings of the traffic studies.

Studies had shown that there was no potential for the all coach air-conditioned on this sector. The only important stations in the section are Salem, Erode and Dharmapuri, of which Dharmapuri is a economically backward district. Even the Chennai-Coimbatore Shatabdi, which runs on a trunk route, is not being booked to capacity.

Similarly, the proposal to introduce the Bangalore-Tiruchi Express on the newly converted broad gauge has been given a go by. The plan of the Southern Railway was to extend the train to run upto Nagore once the Tiruchi-Nagore section was converted into broad gauge.

Peculiarly, the Board has granted one more express train from the Ernakulam in Kerala to Hazrat Nizamuddin, though the Southern Railway had not even proposed such a train. The occupation on the Kerala-Delhi sector is only 72 per cent, whereas, on the Chennai-Delhi sector is 105 per cent and Bangalore-Delhi sector is 110 per cent.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.