NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways has signed an MoU with Tata Steel under which the company will manufacture 22 trains of the country's fastest and feature-rich Vande Bharat Express in the coming year.

The Ministry of Railways has set a production target of 200 Vande Bharat trains for the next two years, besides setting a target to run the first sleeper version of Vande Bharat by the first quarter of 2024. Keeping this in view, an agreement has been signed between Indian Railways and Tata Steel on several schemes to speed up the production work.

The seats in the Vande Bharat Express, from first AC to threetier coaches, will now be manufactured by Tata Steel. The contract for making Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches of the train has also been given to the company, under which structures of panels, windows and railways are being prepared. Under the scheme, at present, the Indian Railways has given a tender of about Rs 145 crore to the multinational steel company for manufacturing the parts of the train, which is to be completed in one year.

Tata Steel’s composites division started working in this direction after receiving a bulk order for seating system of Vande Bharat Express, including 22 train sets with 16 coaches each. Debashish Bhattacharya, Vice President (Technology and New Materials Business), Tata Steel, said: "The seats of this train are specially designed, which can rotate up to 180-degree and have aircraft-like passenger amenities which are a first in India." As per sources, Tata Steel is constantly engaged in increasing its stake in the Railways.

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