Jalandhar Cantonment Railway Station's new building will be dedicated to the public by the first quarter of the next year.

Disclosing this after visiting the project site, Ravneet Singh Bittu, Minister of State for Railways and Food Processing Industries, said officials had been asked to carry out quality work in a timely manner.

The redevelopment of Jalandhar Cantt Railway Station as a world-class railway station was in full swing, he said. The minister also said 12 railway stations in Punjab were being redeveloped under Amrit Bharat – at a cost of Rs 270 crore which include Dhandari Kalan, Phillaur, Phagwara, Kotkapura, Mukatsar, Ferozepur Cantt, Fazilka, Moga, Hoshiarpur, Kapurthala, Gurdaspur and Pathankot City.

Accompanied by BJP leaders Manoranjan Kalia, Sushil Rinku, KD Bhandari, Sarbjit Makkar, Ashok Sareen Hicky and DRM, Ferozepur Division, Sanjay Sahu, Bittu, while addredsing the media at Jalandhar railway station, said with the redevelopment being done at a total cost of Rs 99 crore, once completed Jalandhar Cantt Railway Station will have various state-of-the-art facilities.

These will include segregation doors of both arrival and departure of passengers, world-class passenger facilities, temperature-insulating domes (bringing down platform temperatures by 10 degrees in summers), cultural arte facts, wall murals, etc. green building with gold rating, passenger facilities like retail, cafeteria, entertainment, luxurious concourse for large gatherings, 10 lifts and nine escalators as well as ample parking with pick and drop facility for smooth traffic flow.

He said the railway station currently handles around 7,400 passengers per day, with an average of 141 trains passing through, including two Humsafar and 1 Vande Bharat train. During the financial year 2024-25 till October, the average passenger revenue per day was Rs 16.30 lakh and the average per day from parcel service is Rs 51,000.

Bitu also said the provision of automatic block signalling between the Ludhiana-Jalandhar section had been sanctioned at a cost of Rs 71.25 crore and tenders invited for the same.

A proposal has been initiated by the Ferozepur division to instal Kavach in 1513 km’s, provision of Kavach on the Srinagar-Jalandhar-Jammu, Jammu-Amritsar, Amritsar-Pathankot and Amritsar -Khemkaran sections of the division and on Ferozepur-Ludhiana, Ferozepur-Jalandhar, Ferozepur-Fazilka and Kotkapura-Fazilka-Abohar sections of the division.

Train Collision Avoidance System (KAVACH) is an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) System meant to provide protection to the trains against Signal Passing at Danger (SPAD), excessive speed and collisions.