Agencies
New Delhi, Nov 19: Days after restoring all trains that were stopped due to the pandemic over a year ago, Indian Railways Friday decided to bring back cooked meals on trains too, which were stopped citing Covid-19 restrictions last year. With the restoration of full-fledged train services — 1,768 long-distance trains a day — the Railways Board Friday brought out an order to restore cooked meals as well. Currently, only ready-to-eat, packaged food is available on payment basis on Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and on other trains. The decision effectively restores train services to the pre-pandemic state, although ready-to-eat meals would continue to be served on demand. Cooked food may start to be served from December 1, or even a bit earlier, subject to preparedness by the licensees. According to sources, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) will re-issue fresh tenders for a large number of food licensees to serve on trains. The organisation has been busy doing the paperwork for the past few days. As per internal assessment of the Railway ministry as well as zonal railways, ready-to-cook meals — packaged poha, parantha, rajma chawal, upma etc —did not find much favour among passengers and were sources of passenger dissatisfaction. |
