No Vande Bharat train yet for Telangana

Hyderabad: A high-speed train connecting Hyderabad to other metros in the country has been on Telangana’s list of demands for quite a long. And though there was talk on a high-speed or bullet train connecting Hyderabad to Bengaluru or Mumbai, the plan is still on paper. And in the meanwhile, just as it has been […]

Hyderabad: A high-speed train connecting Hyderabad to other metros in the country has been on Telangana’s list of demands for quite a long. And though there was talk on a high-speed or bullet train connecting Hyderabad to Bengaluru or Mumbai, the plan is still on paper.

And in the meanwhile, just as it has been with several other projects that Telangana requested the Centre for, other States, especially those which are poll-bound, are getting the high-speed Vande Bharat Express trains.

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The Vande Bharat Express, a semi-high-speed train designed to travel at a maximum speed of 180kmph, will make its southern debut on the Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysuru route on November 10. And this is despite Telangana government repeatedly appealing to the union government to sanction a bullet train to Hyderabad. It had made several requests to the Indian Railways to sanction one bullet train and even opposition party leaders, including Nalgonda MP Uttam Kumar Reddy urged the Centre to sanction a bullet train on the Hyderabad-Vijayawada route. But, not one appeal was considered by the BJP government.

As per the National Railway Plan (NRP), there was a proposal to develop a corridor between Hyderabad and Bengaluru. This apart, the National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited had reportedly floated tenders for preparation of the detailed project report for Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad bullet train project.

But, there is hardly any development on this front. union Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy recently reiterated the same old story that the union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav had promised to start brand new Vande Bharat trains from Hyderabad to Tirupati or from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam via Vijayawada.

In the meanwhile, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will flag off the Vande Bharat Express on the Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysuru route on November 10. This will be the fifth Vande Bharat Express, which is set to be flagged off and will cover 483 km. The catch here is that the third and fourth Vande Bharat Express was launched recently in poll-bound Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh States. Similarly, elections are due in Karnataka next year.

Interestingly, though the Vande Bharat trains are said to have Train Collision Avoidance System called KAVACH, the ones launched so far have been in the news for all the wrong reasons. First, the New Delhi – Varanasi semi-high-speed train had developed technical glitches resulting in delays. Though railway officials tried to fix the snags for five hours, they were not successful and eventually passengers were accommodated in the Shatabdi Express.

And then, there have been several instances of Vande Bharat Express trains hitting cattle and suffering damage.