It’s Official, Banaras Back on Railways Map After 64 Years

VARANASI: Manduadih railway station is now Banaras railway station ‘officially’ as the North Eastern Railway has received the final approval from the Indian Railways and its code has changed from MUV to BSBS.
Divisional railway manager of NER (Varanasi) Vijay Kumar Panjiyar told TOI on Saturday, “NER received the approval letter of Indian Railway Conference Association on Friday night. After getting the letter we have started replacing old name Manduadih with Banaras on name board, retro reflective boards, signages, notice, glow sign and electric lighting boards in and around the station.”
The station name and code on railway tickets will be changed after Railway Board makes the alterations in Centre for Railway Information System (CRIS) and Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) and is likely to be implemented by Monday evening, he added.
Panjiyar carried out inspection of the station with additional DRM (infrastructure) Pravin Kumar, senior divisional commerce manager Sanjiv Sharma and senior divisional engineer (coordination) Rajiv Agrawal and told officials to replace Manduadih with Banaras on destination strips on the bogies of trains originating from the station.
The renaming process took almost one and half years to complete. NER officials said former minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha had put up the matter of renaming it as Banaras station in February 2019 with the Yogi Adityanath government, which gave its nod and forwarded it to ministry of home affairs.
Manduadih railway station has witnessed a lot of infrastructure development since Prime Minister Narendra Modi won the Varanasi seat in 2014 general elections. So far, over Rs 36 crore have been spent and the number of platforms increased from three to eight, while ensuring world class passenger amenities. Now the station has entry and exit facilities from platform 1 and 8.
Most prominent trains from Varanasi junction, especially for Delhi like Shivganga Express and Kashi Vishwanath Express were also shifted to Manduadih.

Source: ToI