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Title: Need to introduce a `Southern Splendour Train’ from Hyderabad covering important tourist destinations of Southern India.
SHRI B. VINOD KUMAR (HANAMKONDA): Of late, Hyderabad has emerged as an important tourist destination and also as a tourist gateway to the Southern India. The airport at Hyderabad had registered tremendous growth in recent years in terms of number of domestic and international flights. To tap the vast tourism potential in the Southern India, it is understood that Indian Railways have proposed to introduce a special Rail tourism package called ‘Southern Splendour’ on line of ‘Palace on wheels’.
To attract the high niche international tourists and domestic tourists the rail circuit of the proposed `Southern Splendour’ tourist train should start from and terminate at Hyderabad inter alia covering important tourist places of South India. Hence, it is requested that a new circular train christened ‘Southern Splendour’ should be run from Hyderabad covering Warangal and other important tourist destinations of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and terminate at Hyderabad so as to give fillip to the growth of tourism in the Southern India. The new train should be included in the current Railway Budget and introduced as early as possible.