All railway coaches to have bio-toilets by 2019
While presenting the first unified Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday announced that all railway coaches will have bio-toilets installed by 2019. Jaitley also said the service tax on the purchase of e-tickets booked through IRCTC will be withdrawn. A Rail Safety Fund with a corpus of ?1 lakh crore will be created over next five years, he added.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today presented the first unified Budget as the Rail Budget was merged with it after 92 years. The Budget proposed to withdraw service tax on the purchase of e-tickets booked through IRCTC making railway travel cheaper.Jaitley also announced that by 2019, all coaches of Indian Railways would be fitted with bio-toilets taking a step further towards making the railways clean and more environment-friendly.The Finance Minster announced several measures for improving Railways as he outlined the focus of the government on passenger safety, development, cleanliness and accounting and financing.