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Indian Railways has planned to upgrade its Pantry cars. The estimated cost for bringing the pantry to international standards will be done in period of three years and would cost between 200 to 250 crores. This plan will upgrade all the 350 trains that have pantry cars. This task of upgradation and subsequent maintainance, has been delegated to IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) by Ministry of Railways.

“IRCTC shall redesign, upgrade and maintain the interior of all the redesigned and upgraded pantry cars at their own cost from all perspective including fire safety and overall safety. They shall execute an agreement to this effect with Mechanical Coaching Directorate and shall also take approval of the designed electrical load from the coaching directorate,” as per the the circular issued by the Ministry.

Currently a new catering policy 2017 is being implemented across the network with greater emphasis on transparency. IRCTC has recently reworked its menu for premium trains such as Rajdhani and Duronto Express . The focus has been on quantity of food, however at the cost of minor cut to quantity of food served earlier.

A new artificial intelligence-enabled software in high-definition CCTV cameras is also being used to track how food is prepared in IRCTC kitchens.