Govt sets criterias for re-categorising railway stations

Union Railways Minister Piyush Goyal has announced categories of various railway stations would be to make it more practical and rational. The stations would be re-categotised on the basis of earnings, passenger footfall, strategic importance.

This would enable railways to plan various passenger services and passenger amenities at stations in a more effective and focused manner. The earlier criteria for station categorisation was based on the annual passenger earnings only. Stations were categorised into 7 categories which A-1, A, B, C, D, E and F. The criteria for categorisation of stations have now been revised to include footfalls at the station.

The stations have been further segregated based on the type and clubbed into 3 groups i.e. non-suburban (NS), suburban (S) and Halt (H). Further these groups have been put in grades ranging from NSG1-6, SG1-3 and HG1-3 respectively.

Under this new scheme of categorization of railway stations, the stations have been clubbed into 3 groups namely Non-Suburban, Suburban and Halt. Further, these groups have been put in different grades ranging from 1-6.

Presently, there are 5976 Non-Suburban Railway Station, 484 Suburban Railway Stations and 2153 Halts, which makes total number of stations as 8613. This categorization of stations has been done for the period 2017-18 to 2022-23.