North Central Railway bags first position among all newly created railway zones

Lucknow: The North Central Railway (NCR) has bagged the first position among the newly created railway zones scoring 65.91 per cent marks in the half-yearly performance review by the Railway Board, general manager (GM) of NCR MC Chauhan said.

It was on fourth position overall among the 16 railway zones of the country, he told PTI.

For the purpose of the review, the zones were judged on the basis of 27 key performance indicators, like revenue, ordinary working expenses, originating passenger traffic and non-fare revenue.

Marks were allocated against each of these performance indicators and the ranking was done on the basis of marks obtained by each zone in aggregate.

In ordinary working expenses and non-fare revenue, NCR zone scored 100 per cent marks while in 'Overall Revenues' the zone has scored 98 per cent marks.

It is in the very important indicator of 'Average Increase in Asset Reliability', that the zone stood third in the country with 72 per cent marks.

This is especially creditable as NCR is one of the most high-saturated zones of the Indian railways, carrying 15 per cent of the traffic with only 5 per cent of the track length, and, consequently, having very little time-margin for asset maintenance.

NCR has some inherent limitations such as not having enough natural resources (like coal) to load like some of the major loading railways like the SECR, ECR and East Coast.

It is also one of the most saturated railway zones in the country in terms of the traffic that NCR carries.

"However, despite the limitations, NCR and its team of officers and staff have put their best foot forward to take NCR to the first position among the newly created railways, and to the 4th position among all the 16 railway zones of the country," the GM said.

"We are confident that in future, NCR will further improve its ranking with concerted efforts being put in by the railway zone on increase in revenue, safety and asset reliability," he said.