The train has already made nine trial trips to Latur with 10 wagons, carrying 5 lakh litres of water each time. Express photo
At exactly 10.55 pm on Tuesday, the much-awaited 50-wagon train carrying 50 lakh litres of drinking water left Miraj in Sangli district for Latur city. It is expected to reach Latur between 6 and 7 am on Wednesday after covering a distance of around 342 kilometres.
In the past few days, the same train has already made nine trips to Latur with 10 wagons, carrying 5 lakh litres of water each time.
The 50-wagon train is set for a grand welcome at the Latur railway station. Latur city mayor Akhtar Mistry, Municipal Commissioner Sudhakar Telang, local politicians, people and activists plan to welcome the “Jaldoot” express specially commissioned from Kota in Rajasthan to carry water for around 5 lakh people in the parched Latur city. “Yes, I will be there early morning to welcome the train. It is a big occasion… the train is coming with big relief for Latur citizens who have been struggling to get drinking water,” the mayor said.
Shahbaz Sayed of the Azad Yuva Sanghatna said they planned to felicitate the train driver. “It is momentous occasion for Latur residents who have to struggle for every drop of water. Every family in Latur has to buy water every day and put all their purchases on hold.”
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The Jaldoot first made its experimental trip on April 11. The train faced clearance problem due to the single line section from Miraj to Latur. However, the railways then pulled out all stops to ensure the train was given all the due clearance to its onward journey.
While the Solapur division of Central Railways ensured that Jaldoot Express moved on the tracks without any hitch, the Pune division took care of the loading of water at the Miraj railway station.
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The water is being brought through a 4-km closed pipeline from railway jackwell located on the banks of Krishna river to the water treatment plant at Miraj. From the plant, it goes to Haider Khan well, which is at a distance of 2.5 km. From the well to the yard, the water travels through a closed pipeline into the wagons.
Krishnat Patil, operational manager, Pune Division, said they planned to run a 50-wagon train every day until the monsoon. The 50-wagon train will carry 25 lakh litres of water, equivalent to 450 tankers.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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