Vijayawada: Dairy farmers milk money from Doodh train to Delhi

Vijayawada: Thousands of farmers in Chittoor district and other parts of Rayalaseema benefitted from the 'Doodh Duronto' special trains introduced during lockdown period between Renigunta and H Nizamuddin, New Delhi for transportation of milk in order to balance the milk supply in the national capital.

The total exports of milk to Delhi has crossed 4 crore litres mark by November 12. The Railways is running high speed trains to transport the perishable milk so that the consumers in the national capital can benefit from it. Prior to the lockdown, the milk from Renigunta was transported to New Delhi through milk tankers by attaching to the mail and express trains as per regular schedule.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, all the mail and express trains were cancelled resulting in hampering the transportation of the milk to the national capital.

Considering its importance, the South Central Railway came up with a unique initiative of running Doodh Duronto as a special milk train.

More importantly, the train run on par with best of the mail express trains and the distance between Renigunta and H Nizamuddin (2300 km) is being covered within a reasonable time of 34 hours.

Milk transported through this special train has been collected by a unit of National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) from more than 3000 assembling points spread over 13,000 villages in and around the Chittoor district.

With the enormous response received for the train, to meet the demand the Doodh Duronto special which was introduced on March 26, to operate on every alternate day has been enhanced to run on daily basis from July 2020.

Doodh Duronto special, normally run with six milk tankers, with each milk tanker having a capacity of 40,000 liters totalling to 2.40 lakh litres of milk in a train.

So far, around 167 trips of Doodh Duronto special trains have been operated totalling to 1020 milk tankers duly transporting crore liters milk.

It is relevant to mention that the milk loading has crossed the mark of 4 crore litres from the earlier mark of 3 crore litres within a span of 45 days.

Further to this, even with pandemic times prevailing across the nation due to Covid-19, the freight loading over Guntakal division is back on to track and slowly picking up the normal pace. This has been possible with the introduction of various freight incentive schemes by the Railway Ministry and also setting up of business development units (BDU) to facilitate goods loading on the train by the freight customers and traders

In addition, loading of new commodity gram dal to new destinations like Tadepalligudem, Vizianagaram and Samalkota and loading of fly ash to Tandur & Vishnupuram cement plants, further loading of clinker to Madurai and Adra cement plants contributed in registering the Guntakal Diviion freight loading to 5 Million Tonnes.

Gajanan Mallya, General Manger, SCR has appreciated the consistent efforts of the staff and officers of Guntakal Division for mobilization of milk to cater the nation's needs and for the initiatives being adopted for enhancing the Zone's freight loading.

He also expressed his happiness with regards to the Zone registering 5 MTs loading and crossing 4 (four) crore litres mark of milk.