Free Travel For Girl...

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav on Tuesday announced concessions for students that include free monthly season tickets for girl students up to graduation and for boy students up to 12th standard. At present, free monthly season tickets for second class travel between school and home are provided to girl students up to 12th standard and boy students up to 10th standard. Along with this, he has announced several new concessions for rail travel. These include concession for senior lady citizens, concession for Ashok Chakra Awardees and for AIDS affected persons. Lalu Prasad also announced that passenger fare concession for lady senior citizens would be increased to 50 per cent from 30 per cent at present for all classes of travel. Ashok Chakra awardees will now be provided facility to travel in Rajdhani and Shatabadi trains on card passes. For AIDS patients, a concession of 50 per cent has been announced in second class passenger fares for travel to nominated ART centres for treatment. Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and Indian Railways will collaborate in running a Mother-Child Health Express of seven coaches on a pilot bases for providing medical facilities to the mother and the child. This train will be run by railways at concessional fares and would have facilities like delivery operation room and child health centre. (ANI)