Totally Agree with you, after tracking and analyzing its run, we came to this conclusion that its original TT has a scope for 20 minutes speed up for 20171 and 15 minutes for 20172. This was running exceptionally well between halts and reaching well before time at JHS and AGC, it even sometimes reaches Gwalior early in morning even when there is no slack in JHS-GWL section. But instead of Railway reducing the travel time, they have increased it that too at the terminals, which is still not making sense to me, when the train is running early and even after increasing the halt time, NCR managed to speedup it a liitle in its zone, why are they handing over to NR and WCR late and making it slow by 5 minutes. I reached out to 1 of the official from BPL Div asking a reason for this but he was...
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also as clueless as me. This is a complete mockery of 160 kmph, as per new TT this VB is now 15 minutes slower than Gatimaan in same section with same MPS, which again is not a sense making decision.

Ideally the departure from RKMP should be 6:15/6:20 AM and arrival at NZM should be 13:30 and in return NZM departure should be 15:00 and RKMP arrival at 22:15, this way it will get speedup too and can reach at terminals at proper time. Working on this TT right now, will try to propose it to WCR.