On Monday, three more Vande Bharat trains are scheduled to be introduced by the railways in South India.
Routes from Kacheguda in Telangana to Bengaluru in Karnataka and from Secunderabad in Telangana to Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh and Pune in Maharashtra are being considered for the new services, a PTI report said, quoting government officials.
The BJP has been focusing on its performance in southern states in the next parliamentary elections in 2024 as part of its Mission South.
Karnataka and Telangana’s assembly elections are anticipated to take place later this year, while elections in Andhra Pradesh are predicted to be conducted in 2024.
The first Vande Bharat Express train for southern India was introduced by the Indian Railways in November, on the Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysore route.
The fifth rake of the Vande Bharat Express was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Krantiveera Sangolli Railway station in Bengaluru.
According to officials, the recently launched Secunderabad-Vizag Vande Bharat Express has been running at full capacity since its inception.
The South Central Railway divisions have been requested to update the infrastructure of at least one of their coaching depots in Secunderabad, Hyderabad, and Vijayawada for the maintenance of Vande Bharat trains for these destinations.
The Indian Railways intends to run 75 Vande Bharat trains by the end of this year, and 400 over the next three years. A number of routes, including Nagpur-Bilaspur, Delhi-Varanasi, Gandhinagar-Mumbai, and Chennai-Mysuru, have already used Vande Bharat trains.
Under the flagship Make-in-India programme, the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) at Perambur in Chennai designed and produced the Vande Bharat Express.
