The passenger associations have demanded a faster implementation of projects from the Indian Railways. A meeting was organised on Saturday evening between various passenger associations and the Union Railway minister Piyush Goyal for the same. Though the minister skipped the function, which was held at BJP's Dadar office, the associations listed several demands to city BJP chief for them to be fulfilled.
"It is a good thing that MUTP 3A has been approved. There are several projects that will help in overall development. However there is a need to ensure that deadlines are met so that people are not inconvenienced," said Kailash Verma, member, Mumbai Rail Pravasi Sangh. "There are areas beyond Virar and Kalyan where lakhs of people use the railway services but there is an increased need to augment railway infrastructure there."
For instance, the passenger associations from Thane wanted the completion of 5-6 lines on Thane-Diva apart from adding trains on the Kalyan-Karjat/Kasara sections.
Apart from this, the passengers suggested that the railways should go for half-AC and non-Ac coaches in a single 12-car train. This is better than running a fully AC train whose demand seems to be less and it ruins the punctuality. The associations also gave their set of demands to increase trains to the north, south and Konkan. Also the need to connect metro rail with suburban system was also raised by people.
"I will collect these set of demands made by the passenger associations and hand it over to the railway minister," said BJP leader Ashish Shelar who attended the event.