The Railway Board has asked the North Central Railway Zone to improve the punctuality of trains that emanate from or pass through it.

NCR, which always had a remarkable record of maintaining trains’ punctuality, has, of late, reported poor punctuality performance as several trains have failed to maintain their running time schedule.

“It has been observed that the punctuality performance of NCR is showing a declining trend,” the Railway Board said in a communication to the Principal Chief Operations Manager of NCR.

“Board desires that NCR should take corrective measures for punctual running of trains, closely monitor punctual running of mail express trains from point to point, control assets failures and improve rectification time of failures, so that punctuality losses are minimised,” it added.

Anand Swaroop, Divisional Railway Manager, Agra division, which comes under NCR, blamed the ongoing infrastructural work, due to which the smooth running of trains has been impacted.

“A lot of infrastructural work is going on in the division,” Swaroop said when asked to respond to the Board's communication.

“It is just a temporary phase which will get over very soon as construction work is about to be finished. We will show a more remarkable punctuality record once all the projects are completed,” Himanshu Shekhar Upadhyay, Chief Public Relations Officer, NCR, said.

Three divisions -- Prayagraj, Jhansi and Agra -- come under NCR zone, and in March 2022, the zone showed 93.20 per cent punctuality which was the best among all the 17 railway zones in the country.

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