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Railways to Roll Out Multilingual AI with Bhashini

2025-06-12

In a major step towards enhancing accessibility in public transport services, the Digital India Bhashini Division (DIBD) has partnered with the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) to deploy multilingual artificial intelligence solutions across key railway platforms.

The collaboration will integrate Bhashini’s advanced language technology stack—including Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Text Translation, Text-to-Speech (TTS), and Optical Character Recognition (OCR)—into CRIS-managed systems such as the National Train Enquiry System (NTES) and RailMadad. This will enable Indian railway services to be accessible in 22 Indian languages.

“This collaboration will transform how millions of passengers engage with railway services daily. Through Bhashini’s AI capabilities, we are ensuring that language is no longer a barrier to accessing vital public services,” said Amitabh Nag, CEO of Bhashini.

The partnership also includes plans to co-develop chatbots and voice assistants, create multilingual over-the-counter interfaces, and scale Bhashini-powered solutions via cloud and on-premise infrastructure. These features will be rolled out across websites, mobile apps, kiosks, call centres, and enable real-time, speech-based interactions in regional languages. Joint technical workshops and pilot deployments are expected to begin soon.

“CRIS is proud to partner with Bhashini to implement inclusive, AI-powered solutions across our digital platforms. This will enhance accessibility, transparency, and efficiency in our passenger-facing services,” said G.V.L. Satya Kumar, Managing Director of CRIS.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT stated that this memorandum of understanding is a significant milestone under the Digital India programme and strengthens India’s global leadership in public digital infrastructure powered by language AI.

This development follows last month’s announcement from India AI Mission and Intel India, which outlined a partnership to boost AI innovation and skills through initiatives such as YuvaAI (for students), StartupAI (for startups), and IndiaAI Dialogues (for policymakers). The initiative will also help extend Bhashini’s capabilities to classrooms across remote parts of India.