Railway Ministry Piyush Goyal is coming with new rules under which if a train is delayed, except emergency, senior railway official will lose their promotion. At a time when 30 percent trains in Indian run delayed putting passengers into a plethora of problems, there is at least one good news for the train travelers.

Piyush Goyal, the Railway Minister has asked senior Railway officials to improve the punctuality of trains within one month or be ready to lose appraisal proportionately.

Last week in an internal meeting the railway minister has told the zonal managers that they cannot delays the trains on the pretext of maintenance work of railway track. If the trains are delayed they must be ready to face punitive action in the form of deferment of their appraisal.

It has been reported that most of the railway zones have been showing cause of the delay due to the maintenance work.

The minister also brought into notice and Northern Railways did worst in rail punctuality. With 49.59 percent punctuality performance it leads the chart of poor punctuality figure, followed by Northeast Frontier Railway and the Eastern Railway in punctuality performance index at 27 percent and 26 percent respectively.

Last month Prime Minister Modi had told the railway minister to investigate the sorry state affair of train punctuality and instructed him to improve the running of the trains.

The minister has made it clear if the punctuality of the trains in all the zones does not improve by 30 June, the General Managers will not be considered for promotion. He told the railway officials that the punctuality of trains should be like that of Switzerland where trains arrive station ahead of arrival time.

“Most of the trains of the Indian railways run late. The fastest running trains like Shatabdi and Rajdhani run hours of late. Most of the trains are named as the express train but they run on the speed of a bullock cart. Ultimately it is the passengers who have to face several problems,” said Prasen Sharma, a regular railway commuter.