However, Bihar has been excluded from the list of proposed budget hotels. Earlier, the plan was to build budget hotels in Patna, Gaya and Rajgir to promote tourism in the state.

According to Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) director Vinod Asthana, it has been decided to commercially exploit the vacant land of railways across the country. The ambitious budget hotel plan will yield good revenue to railways. IRCTC will go ahead with the plan as approved for the first phase of work, he said.

IRCTC MD Nalin Singhale said the proposed budget hotels will be built and developed on public-private partnership basis with a view to promoting tourism and providing full comfort to tourists.

IRCTC has already selected important places where these budget hotels are to be built. These places are Delhi, Varanasi, Ajmer, Jaipur, Bhubaneswar, Allahabad, Darjeeling, Sealdah, Lucknow, Mysore, Mumbai, Ooty, Puri, Amritsar, Shimla, Ujjain, Udaipur, Chandigarh, Kanyakumari, Pune, Nagpur and Agra, he said adding Bihar did not figure in the list.