HYDERABAD: Under the Centre’s plan to privatise the services in the Railways, the South Central Zone is all set to get 11 private trains and three of those will be daily services while two of them will have Tejas Express like infrastructure and facilities. Eight of these private trains will originate in Telangana and will ply to other destinations under the South Central Railways (SCR), including Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.
Gajanan Mallya, General Manager of SCR, said, “There will be 11 private trains. We will be opting for an open model for the tenders. This will be a very competitive scenario. Some of the interested parties are also interested in bringing their own trains. However, we will be charging them operational costs for using the tracks and the maintenance of these trains.”
The 11 private trains will cover sectors like Cherlapally-Srikakulam, Lingampally-Tirupati, Cherlapally-Panvel, Vijayawada-Vishakhapatnam, Tirupati-Vishakhapatnam, Cherlapally-Shalimar, Aurangabad-Panvel, Secunderabad-Guwahati, Cherlapally-Chennai, Guntur-Lingampally and Cherlapally-Varanasi.
“Of these 11 trains, only Guntur-Lingampally and Aurangabad-Panvel will have Tejas Express like amenities and infrastructure,” said Mallya.
“The ticketing of these trains will most probably be via e-ticketing or online applications. However, we haven’t finalised that yet,” he added.