To help farmers and villagers transport their products from one place to another place of the country, Indian Railways launched Kisan Rail service.

Under Kisan Rail Project, a few train services are operational at present. One train among them is from Maharashtra to Bihar and another is from Andhra Pradesh to Delhi. Besides, a train from Bengaluru to Delhi and Nagpur to Delhi also began their operations in the last quarter of 2020.

The government wants to expand these train services to many other places also and allocate resources for them in the upcoming Union Budget.

Here are the features of Kisan Rail Services:

• As Kisan Rail transports agricultural products, it has refrigerated coaches in both Express and Freight trains.
• It is aimed to improve the income of farmers by preventing the destruction of perishable products.
• It ensures faster and cheaper transportation facilities continuously and thereby provides a better price to farmers.
• Various vegetables and fruits are notified in the list to be carried via these trains at 50 per cent subsidized rate. These vegetables include cauliflower, carrot, French beans, brinjal, carrot, okra, cucumber, onion, garlic, potato, tomato, bitter gourd etc. Fruits like banana, mango, guava, papaya, orange, pineapple, pomegranate, apple, pineapple, jackfruit, almond, litchi, kiwi, passion fruit, lime, sweet lemon, pear etc. are also transported in these trains.
• In addition to this, these trains carry other perishable products like milk, meat, fish in their frozen containers.
• PM Modi inaugurated the 100th Kisan Rail train through video conferencing on December 28, 2020. This train will operate from Maharashtra to West Bengal. The Railways wants to cross 1,000 Kisan Rail mark in the financial year 2021-22.

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