Just two passengers travel per day on the 16.8 km Balangir-Bichhupali train in Odisha that was flagged off on January 15, 2019, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a Right To Information (RTI) query has revealed. That fetches the railways a daily revenue of just Rs 20, whereas the track between Balangir and Bichhupali was built at a cost of Rs 115 crore. “The Balangir-Bichhupali station daily passenger turnover is two, per day passenger earning is Rs 20,” R B Jena, public information officer at Sambalpur Division of East Coast Railway, said in response to the RTI application filed by Balangir-based RTI activist Hemanta Kumar Panda. Given that the passenger train travels between the two stations twice a day, most of the time, it goes empty.
— source downtoearth.org.in | 14 Jan 2020