Passengers were on Sunday stranded inside the Delhi-bound Vande Bharat Express for more than an hour, News18 reported. The train, considered to be India’s fastest, was indigenously built at a cost of around Rs 97 crore, and was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 15.

The air conditioner, lights and fans were not working in three bogies of the train when it was stranded at the Allahabad station.

The engine-less train, formerly known as Train 18, reached Allahabad station at 4.50 pm. However, 10 minutes before the arrival the air-conditioning stopped working because of a fault in the auxiliary converter. The train left the station at 5.53 pm after the problem was foxed.

The Northern Central Railway said that additional divisional railway manager of Allahabad, senior divisional mechanical engineer, senior divisional electrical engineer, station director and other senior officials of Allahabad division were present at the station during the incident.

A number of passengers took to Twitter to alert Union Minister of Railways Piyush Goyal about the problem.

A day after Vande Bharat Express was launched, it broke down about 200 km from Delhi on its return journey from Varanasi because of a technical fault. It has been plagued with problems since its trial runs in November last year. Within days of its launch, it was vandalised in Uttar Pradesh, for the third time in two months.


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