Bhubaneswar: Adding another feather to its cap, the East Coast Railway (ECoR) has been selected for the most prestigious Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Best Zonal Railway Shield-2020 for all-round performance among all the zones in Indian Railways.
Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Best Zonal Railway Shield is a prestigious honour for any Zonal Railway and the East Coast Railway would be receiving this shield for the third time. Prior to this, ECoR had bagged this shield for all-round performance in 2008-09 and 2015-16.
This shield instituted in the memory of Late Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant, freedom fighter and former Union Minister, is given every year to the Zonal Railway whose performance is adjudged best amongst all Zonal Railways.
Railway Minister Piyush Goyal will handover Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant shield to East Coast Railway during Railway National Award Function.
The criteria of selection for this prestigious award is on the basis of loading of revenue & earnings, goods traffic, punctuality of trains, passenger traffic, consequential train accidents per million train KMs, capacity utilization of repair workshop out-turn, coach performance, energy consumption, utilization of motive power and railway stock, operating ratio, economy in manpower, working of signal/telecom equipment, the progress of track renewal, stock utilization, performance of track machine, ticket checking, timely completion of major works, earnings and scrap disposal among others.
ECoR loaded 200.85 million tonnes of freight in the 2019-2020 financial year, which was an increase of 4.73 percent over the last financial year.
This apart, East Coast Railway will also receive shields for traffic transportation, accounts and financial management, and also the sales management shield during the Railway National Award Ceremony.