Representational Pic
Nagpur: In order to provide the much-longed good quality food at reasonable prices to the passengers, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is all set to start its food supply operations from this week onwards. Initially IRCTC will serve meals aboard select premium trains and later add more trains to its list. It may be mentioned that IRCTC took over catering operations at Nagpur railway station about 5 months ago. IRCTC has established a base kitchen in Nagpur through which it will initially supply meals aboard three trains — Nizamuddin-Bengaluru Rajdhani, Bengaluru-Nizamuddin Rajdhani and Yeshwantpur-Delhi Rohilla Duronto Express.
They have kept the number of passengers per train at 1100, taking the total meal supply target to 3300 passengers. The prices for both veg and non-veg food has been kept from Rs 35 to Rs 112 per meal.
It may be mentioned that under the New Catering Policy-2017, IRCTC was handed over the base kitchens at Nagpur and Ballarshah stations in March. However, as pantry car contractors challenged the move to supply food by IRCTC, the base kitchens were non-functional. Now, new licensees have been appointed for pantry cars. At Nagpur, IRCTC spent over Rs 20 lakh for automatic machines like roti maker (churns out 20 chapatis in 60 seconds), boilers, vegetable cutter, steam kettles, dough kneader and other equipments. The IRCTC has appointed a Delhi-based licensee at Nagpur for food supply. For the past four months, the staff was sitting idle and equipment gathering dust.
“IRCTC has introduced a clause making it mandatory that meals over RSD (Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto) trains will be supplied through base kitchens only. The pantry car contractors will now serve breakfast only. Accordingly, the three premium trains will get better food now from Nagpur,” officials said.
