The first Kisan Rail of India has been flagged off from Devlali railway station of Maharastra . The Union Minister of Agriculture Minister- NarendraSingh Tomar and Railway Minister- Piyush Goyal has launched it via video conferencing.
This is the first such train in India which is carrying vegetables and fruits between Maharashtra and Bihar. It covers the journey of 1,519 kilometres in over 31 hours.
This Kisan train is a step towards realizing the goal of doubling farmers’ incomes by 2022.
This train would help in bringing perishable agricultural products like vegetables, fruits to the market in a short period of time. It has frozen containers to build a seamless national cold supply chain for perishables, inclusive of fish, meat and milk.
The announcement regarding the "Kisan Rail" was made in the Budget 2020 . Nirmala Sitharaman (Finance Minister of India) had announcedthe initiative envisaging setting up of a 'Kisan Rail' through the public-private-partnership (PPP) model for a cold supply chain to transport perishable goods.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare would coordinate the arrangements of aggregation of consignments through FPOs, warehousing, temperature-controlled storages, etc. The Ministry would also provide details of production centres on the Kisan Special Routes along with seasonality of