The Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu has said that to provide freedom to passengers to select their meals from an array of choices including local cuisine, e-catering has been introduced in 108 trains on an experimental basis from January this year. Food can be ordered through the IRCTC website at the time of booking of tickets. He said, the Railways is working to integrate the best food chains of the country into this project. Depending on the response from the customers, the facility will be extended to cover more trains. It is also intended to set up Base Kitchens in specified Divisions to be run by highly credible agencies for serving quality food.

 Presenting the Railway Budget 2015-16 in Parliament today Shri Prabhu said, at the moment water vending machines are sparse. The facility will expand to cover most Railway stations. This will ensure availability of clean drinking water at very low cost to the people apart from being an environment friendly measure.

E catering integration broadens passenger meal choice via platform ordering, with centralised base kitchens to improve food quality. The policy integrates private food chains into the e catering framework to broaden passenger meal choice and enable pre booking via the rail catering platform, with plans to extend the service based on customer response and to establish centralised Base Kitchens run by credible agencies to improve food quality. It also proposes widespread deployment of water vending machines to ensure affordable clean drinking water and reduce environmental impact.