Bhubaneswar: East Coast Railway (ECoR) to receive most prestigious Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Best Zonal Railway Shield-2020 for All Round Performance among all the zones in Indian Railways. This is a very prestigious honour for any Zonal Railway and ECoR will receive this shield for the third time.

Earlier, ECoR had bagged this shield for All Round Performance in 2008-09 and 2015-16.

Pt. Govind Ballabh Pant Award is given every year to the Zonal Railway, whose performance is adjudged to be best amongst all Zonal Railways. Railway minister Piyush Goyal will handover this shield to ECoR during Railway National Award Function.

This award is based on the criteria of selection on the basis of loading of revenue & earnings, goods traffic, punctuality of trains, passenger traffic, consequential train accidents per million train KMs, capacity utilisation of repair workshop out-turn, coach performance, energy consumption, utilisation of motive power and railway stock, operating ratio, economy in manpower, working of signal/telecom equipments, progress of track renewal, stock utilisation, performance of track machine, ticket checking, timely completion of major works, earnings and scrap disposal etc.

ECoR loaded 200.85 million tonnes freight in 2019-2020 financial year, which was an increase of 4.73 percent over last financial year.

Apart from this, ECoR will also receive Traffic Transportation Shield, Accounts & Financial Management Shield and Sales Management Shield during the Railway National Award Ceremony.