At present, Rail Neer is mandatorily supplied to passengers of all Rajdhani/Shatabdi/Duronto/Suvidha trains. There is also mandatory supply of Rail Neer in 139 pairs of trains and 200 stations as identified by the Ministry of Railways. For remaining trains/stations, other brands of Packaged Drinking Water (PDW) bottles are being supplied to the passengers, as approved by the Zonal Railways. Presently, approximately 6 lakh litres of packaged drinking water is being supplied to passengers all over the Indian Railways, through production in seven Rail Neer plants located at Nangloi, Delhi (2003), Danapur, Bihar (2004), Palur, Tamil Nadu (2011), Ambernath, Maharashtra (2014), Amethi, Uttar Pradesh (2015), Parassala, Kerala (2016) and Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh (2017). However, since the estimated demand for PDW is approximately 25 lakh litres per day, six more Rail Neer plants are planned to become operational in the next two years which will augment the total capacity to approximately ten lakh litres per day. In addition, 1106 Water Vending Machines set up by Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) have been installed at 345 stations for dispensing drinking water to passengers at prescribed rates in refills and with containers as under:-

Another 1100 Water Vending Machines are planned to be installed on other railway stations shortly. Further, all railway stations already have provision of potable drinking water on all platforms to satisfy the needs of rail passengers, free of cost. On most of the important stations, water coolers and chiller plants are also in operation for providing cold drinking water to passengers during the summer season.

   This Press Release is based on the information given by the Minister of State for Railways Shri Rajen Gohain in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on 12.04.2017 (Wednesday).

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