Very rightly said, this is Jumlebaazi, which almost every politician in our country often resort to.
The normal trend is that, suppose if the distance beween city centres of DEL & JP is 250 kms. as said, then they will take the time taken for travel between the outskirts of the 2 cities. The time required to travel from outskirt to city center for JP & Delhi is in hours which they convenient forget to account. Suppose, even this distance, if calculated by experts come out to be 2 hrs 25 minutes, then our netas will conveniently round and announce it 2 hrs. Media also like more such "dhamakedaar" headlines in order to attract maximum attention of people. So practically, a journey...
more... of about 4.5 hrs (2 hrs intra city, 2.5 hrs inter city), is just 2 hours in announcement.
I had a taste of jumlebaazi way back in 1986/7 when local new paper reported that a new daily superfast train called Mahanadi Express shall be operated between BPL & BSP and coaches shall have distinct livery and unofficially called it Madhav-Moti express. (At that time Superfast trains were rare and meant the ones like legendary TN/AP/etc which were a craze ampngst people). It will cover 800km in 8 hrs and so on.
I knew that 800 km in 8 hrs is impossible, but expected that this super fast train should be one like TN/AP in matter of speed. At that time travelling in these (non daily) trains was a matter of craze. When I had to travel from BPL, I preferred Mahanadi Exp for travel, although it reached the destination at odd hrs (about 4:00 am), and did not book a reserved ticket in the ever crowded Chhatisgarh express in advance. It was probably first or second run of the brand new train, which was some what smelling of fresh paint. To my dismay, I came to know at BPL RS that, the train departing BPL at 14:00 hrs and reach NGP at 23:00 hrs without any intermediate commercial stop!!, a distance of just less than 400 kms in 9 hrs (a far cry from 800km in 8 hrs), even more than ordinary express trains running on the route!!!!