Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw is on a maiden trip to his home state Odisha from where he has been elected as a Rajya Sabha MP and was recently made a cabinet minister in the Narendra Modi government.
Like his several other newly-sworn-in colleagues, Vaishnaw undertook the Jan Ashirwad Yatra and reached Bhubaneswar on Thursday.
After a day-long program in the capital city of Bhubaneswar, the Rail Mantri’s next destination is Rayagada.
Vaishnaw ditched the VIP protocol and decided to undertake a train journey. He boarded the Hirakhand Express on Thursday evening and is slated to arrive at his destination on Friday morning.
During his travel, Vaishnaw also interacted with passengers, who were taken by surprise to see the Minister in their midst.
The conversation with passengers ranged from talking about the amenities on Indian Railways and whether or not the protocols of Swachh Bharat are being followed. Vaishnaw also conversed with youth to understand their for a ‘new India’.
Vaishnaw, who hails from Rajasthan and has had a long-standing working relationship with Orissa as a civil servant, very fluently converses in English, Hindi and local Odia, which made the passengers happy.
“I’ve come back to travel on trains possibly after a gap of about five years, but it has been my lifelong mode of transport,” he told CNN-News18.
On seeking feedback from the public, Vaishnaw said: “It is a different feeling altogether, and it feels so good to be on India’s lifeline where you are working on a Mission. It brings a bigger sense of responsibility and tells you how important the Rail feedback is.”
He added that passengers have seen and appreciated the improvements in the Railway system since the Modi government came into power. “What the consumers told me is that they are happy to see the Railways being more cleaner and efforts being made to make it an ‘experience mode of travel’. This has happened because of the vision of the Prime Minister, but we have miles to go before we can rest; the potential of the Indian Railways in nation-building is immense,” he said.
The Minister has often reiterated the need for Indian Railways to work on a ‘Mission mode’ to achieve the dreams of a ‘new India’. During his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke about having 75 Vande Bharat semi-speed rail trains across the country, a feat to be achieved in a year or so.
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