Union Minister for Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw, said that Indian Railways has utilised 98 per cent of its budget for FY26, reflecting the pace of project execution. He added that in the coming days, trains will dominate flights on several upcoming corridors across the country.
“In the last financial year, the entire capex was spent practically by the first week of March itself. Practically by the last week of February, it was like some 98 percentage points. Then we had to, in a sense stop that because we have to complete the entire year,” Vaishnaw said.
According to Vaishnaw, 49,000 kilometres of railway tracks across the country have been electrified, which is more than Germany’s entire network. Additionally, 36,000 new kilometres of track have been added to the Indian railway network, which is about six times the size of Switzerland. In many of these routes, travel time will be significantly reduced and people will prefer trains over airlines on those routes.
Highlighting the upcoming projects, Vaishnaw said the government is working on new corridors: Mumbai to Pune where travel time will drop to just 28 minutes, Pune to Hyderabad, which will take one hour and 55 minutes; and Hyderabad to Bengaluru, which will take around 2 hours.
Bengaluru and Chennai will combine into one city, reducing travel time between them to 78 minutes.
“Delhi to Varanasi will be 3 hours and 50 minutes. Delhi to Lucknow will be significantly less, just about 2 hours,” Vaishnaw added.
Recently, the Railways Minister reviewed the transition to Indian Railways’ upgraded reservation system and directed officials to ensure passengers do not face inconvenience during the migration from the existing 40-year-old platform.
The reservation system, first introduced in 1986, has now been completely overhauled using upgraded technology and expanded capacity. Indian Railways introduced internet-based ticket booking in 2002, and online ticketing now accounts for nearly 88 per cent of total ticket bookings in the country.