MUMBAI, Aug 17: The Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation (MRVC) will be constituted within a month, assured union minister of state for railways Ram Naik. At a press conference to inaugurate two new technological additions to the Western Railway (WR), he said `procedural delays' were delaying the setting up of the corporation.The union government was awaiting the views of various ministries concerned with the functioning of the corporation like defence, revenue and commerce, on the subject, stated Naik. "Some of them had raised objections to using the phrase `commercial exploitation of excess railway land', so we rephrased it as `optimal use of railway land'," he said.A cabinet note has already been prepared and the corporation will be set up within a month, he assured.The minister inaugurated an Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) programme, meant to provide online information on trains on any section of the WR."Information on the position of a train once it enters WR territory will be recorded inthe programme, and the caller will be able to ascertain the time of arrival of a train scheduled to arrive early in the morning the previous night itself," said V K Chopra, chief signal and telecommunication engineer of WR.The project, which costs Rs 50 lakh, was developed by WR engineers, who were rewarded Rs 50,000 each from Naik for their efforts. In a bid to improve the efficiency of the internal data transmission network, a Digital Microwave System between Churchgate-Ahmedabad and Vadodara-Ratlam sections has also been introduced at a cost of Rs 33 crore. This network is meant to improve the railway's passenger reservation systems, and will function through 172 additional STD circuits. "It will save WR nearly one crore rupees every year which is otherwise spent on leased lines from Department of Telecommunications," said WR general manager V D Gupta.Naik also flagged off a new ladies special between Churchgate and Borivli, which will leave for Borivli at 5.39 pm every day. This has increased thenumber of ladies specials on the WR from two to three.The Central Railway has also decided to introduce three extra cars reserved for women on the 6.02 pm semi-fast local for Kalyan from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus from Wednesday. A compartment reserved for women vendors has also been introduced on the CR from the first train till 10 am, on the same lines as that on WR.
