From your language it seems that you support this. I don't . I think we should put the train first in those other routes. As for liberals, they will keep barking , I always start laughing when anyone says " now liberals can't say X" . I mean, have you not been observing these past years.It's an obvious political statement. So far all new Vande Bharat routes are political. The first one was Delhi to Varanasi before LS polls (PM's constituency), and now Delhi to Katra (in the heart of Kashmir).
There are far more commercially viable routes for Vande Bharat (such as Bengaluru to Chennai), but they're treating it as "a development care package directly from Modi."
To the global audience we're basically copying China's ambitious train to Lhasa.
Liberals have no answer to development.
J&K got another handout worth hundreds of crores just so modiji could make a political statement. Har har modi ghar ghar modi.