The Railway Ministry is likely to announce 200 to 300 new Vande Bharat trains in the upcoming Union Budget 2023-24.
The Centre has a long-term vision to phase out and replace all the existing Rajdhani, Shatabdi and other Super Express trains with Vande Bharat trains.
For achieving the long-term roadmap, the Railway Ministry plans to massively increase the production of Vande Bharat trains.
Currently, only 5 Vande Bharat trains are in service, running on Delhi-Varanasi, Delhi-Jammu, Gandhinagar-Mumbai, Amb-Andaura (Himachal Pradesh)-Delhi, and Bengaluru-Chennai routes.
Initially, the Vande Bharat trains are being planned to run on sections with a range of up to 500 Kms. Going forward Railway Ministry plans to run the sleeper version of Vande Bharat trains on longer routes of over 500 Kms.
Indian Railways has set a target to manufacture 75 VB trains Till August 2023. In FY 2023-24, over 100 Vande Bharat trains will be manufactured.
To achieve the ambitious target of higher production capacity for the Vande Bharat rakes, the production will take place in 3 factories: Integral Coach Factory, Chennai; Modern Coach Factory, Raebareli; Railway manufacturing Unit, Sonepat and Manufacturing unit at Latur.
