Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Apr 12:

East Coast Railway has bagged Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Best Zonal Railway Shield-2015 for All Round Performance among all the zones in Indian Railways. This is a very prestigious honour for any Zonal Railway and East Coast Railway has won this shield for the second time. Earlier, East Coast Railway had bagged this shield for All Round Performance in 2008.

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This shield instituted in the memory of Late Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant, the freedom fighter and former Union Minister, is given every year to the Zonal Railway, whose performance is adjudged to be best amongst all Zonal Railways. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu will handover this shield to East Coast Railway during Railway Week National Award Function to be held on April 16.

This award is based on the criteria of selection on the basis of loading of revenue & earnings, goods traffic, punctuality of trains, passenger traffic, consequential train accidents per million train KMs, capacity utilisation of repair workshop out-turn, coach performance, energy consumption, utilisation of motive power and railway stock, operating ratio, economy in manpower, working of signal/telecom equipments, progress of track renewal, stock utilisation, performance of track machine, ticket checking, timely completion of major works, earnings and scrap disposal etc.

ECoR loaded 173.49 million tonnes freight in 2015-16 financial year, which was an increase of 7.1 per cent over last year.