IRCTC to live stream food preparation at base kitchens

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has developed a live streaming mechanism that will allow passengers to view how the food served to them in trains is prepared and packaged at various base kitchens of the national transporter.

Railway minister Piyush Goyal had suggested the move in a review meeting recently.

According to a statement by the IRCTC, Railway Board Chairman Ashwani Lohani on Wednesday inaugurated the live streaming of food preparations at base kitchens to IRCTC's website.

The IRCTC had earlier launched an artificial intelligence tool that uses CCTV footage to detect anomalies in hygiene level and communicates it to individuals concerned to initiate regulatory action, the statement said, adding it was developed in association with an artificial intelligence and vision computing company called Wobot.

"Live streaming will go a long way in increasing transparency and public confidence in the quality of food cooked at IRCTC-monitored base kitchens. The live streaming can be accessed by anyone on IRCTC’s website under the gallery link," it said.

Earlier in the day, Lohani inspected food preparation at the IRCTC's state-of-the-art central kitchen in Noida.

The kitchen serves 10,000 meals a day for 17 Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto trains departing from New Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin and Anand Vihar Railway Stations.

Appreciating the scale of operations at the kitchen, Lohani said the existence of a dedicated food testing lab is a unique feature of IRCTC's catering operations for the railways.

Such facility is conspicuous by its absence in airline catering sector, he said.