Railway Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu today flagged off the new Shatabdi Express train between New Delhi and Bhatinda at a ceremony held at the New Delhi Railway station, here.
The train with one executive chair car and seven air-conditioned chair car coaches will run on every Monday and Saturday in both directions.
Minister for Science and Technology, Earth Sciences, Dr Harsh Vardhan, , Minister for Food Processing Industries Ms Harsimrat Kaur Badal, Shri Minister of State for Railways Manoj Sinha, Ms Meenakshi Lekhi along with senior Railways officials were present on the occasion.
Following the inaugural run, regular services of the 12047/12048 New Delhi-Bhatinda-New Delhi Shatabdi Express will commence from December 20.
There are 14 pairs of Shatabdi services on the Northern Railway serving 11 important cities. They are Bhopal, Lucknow, Ajmer, Dehradun, Amritsar (2 pairs), Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Moga, Kathgodam, Kanpur and Kalka (2 pairs).
The Bhatinda-New Delhi Shatabdi is the 15th Shatabdi Express to run on the zone. The running of this train is an important value-addition to the fleet of passenger services in this area.
It is worth mentioning here that Union Food & Processing Minister Harsimrat Badal also held another ceremony at Bathinda Railway Station to take credit for the same, while local BJP workers boycotted the flag off ceremony. They were angry that the government advertisements in various newspapers on today’s function did not carry the photographs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu.