Station halt requests by VIPs cost Railways ₹27.84 lakh a year

All undertakings asked to curtail ‘avoidable expenditure’ by 20%

A two-minute halt at a particular station usually requested by public representatives to railway authorities costs quite a sum — ₹7,628, which includes ₹1,763 for additional fuel cost, ₹4,401 for locomotive maintenance, ₹1,464 for earning capacity lost for a diesel locomotive. For an electric locomotive, it is slightly cheaper, working to around ₹5,451. In case the railway authorities are able to successfully convince the demanding public representatives to withdraw the ‘uneconomical’ stoppage, it will save about ₹27.84 lakh per annum if the train is hauled by the diesel locomotive and about ₹18.25 lakh a year if the train is hauled by the electric locomotive, according to the expenditure worked out by the traffic costing cell of the South Central Railway (SCR). A series of awareness directions have been issued to the departments of operations and commercial concerned in recent times in order to impress upon the staff about the need to cut expenditure wherever possible in view of the prevailing financial condition of the railways where the passenger earnings has nosedived in the past one and half years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.