Mamata Banerjee proposes various safety measures in rail budget

Railway minister Mamata Banerjee today proposed to raise 12 companies of women RPF personnel within the next five years to ensure security of women passengers.

Banerjee, presenting the rail budget, also proposed to convert all unmanned level crossings in the country into manned ones within the same period and to introduce automatic fire and smoke detection system in 20 long-distance trains.

The companies of RPF women personnel will be named as 'Mahila Vahini', she said.

Laying stress on public-private participation, the railway minister said six clean drinking water bottling plants will be set up through PPP mode for providing cheap bottled drinking water and 94 stations will be upgraded as 'Adarsh stations' with enhanced passenger amenities.

The minister also proposed to construct 93 multi-functional complexes and multi-level parking lots through PPP mode.

For the benefit of passengers, she announced short message service (SMS) providing updates of reservation status and train timings to passengers as well as updates on movement of wagons to freight customers.

She also announced introduction of mobile e-ticketing centres at hospitals, universities, courts, IITs, IIMs, district headquarters and village panchayats.