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Created on Thursday, 22 June 2023 04:27
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(Image courtesy:crs.gov.in)
"I would like to emphasise on one thing and that is the accountability. The accident took place and more than 300 people died. Earlier also the accidents had taken place. Some Ministers resign and some others do not do so. It is not the accountability of the Hon. Minister only but of the Government. The Government is accountable to the House. It is accountable to the railway passengers. If such a big accident takes place then what is the morality and what is the justification of constitutional morality, the House wants the reply to all this?" stated A.B. Vajpayee as an Opposition stalwart in Lok Sabha on 21st August 1995.
Mr. Vajpayee, a Bharat Ratna & BJP Marg Darshak, was participating in a debate on an accident involving Purushottam Express and Kalindi Express near Firozabad in UP.
His passion & vision for transparency and accountability has direct relevance to Balasore Trains disaster (BTD) in Odisha in which two passenger trains & one goods train collided.
A similar triple trains collision happened in Jharkhand on 20th March, 1959. On that day, No. 664 Dn. goods train from Rourkela side was waiting at the Down Outer Signal of Chakradharpur. Meanwhile, No. 656 Down Goods, also coming from Rourkela side, collided into its rear.
As a result, seven wagons of No. 656 Goods train got derailed blocking the Up Main line. A few minutes later, No. 2 Up Howrah-Bombay Mail (HBM) left Chakradharpur and collided with the derailed wagons. HBM's engine got derailed and capsized and two coaches next to it also derailed.
Several accidents in loop lines, including a tragic head-on collision with a parked Military Special train in August 1991 in UP, have happened over the decades. Train collision on main lines have been many more. Similarly, instances of derailed coaches or bogies, infringing an adjoining track, and thus becoming the cause of second accident have recurred.
Similar is the story of instances of hanging parts of rail infrastructure or any other obstruction on track becoming a cause of accident. Two such recent incidents figured in a safety conference presided over by Chairman of the Railway Board (RB) on 3rd April 2023.
Read more: Achieve Forgotten Targets by Unveiling Rail Safety Blueprints
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Created on Sunday, 16 February 2020 07:15
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(Image Courtesy: Indian Railways)
Indian Railways (IR) is unable to check its slide-back despite herculean efforts. There is nothing concrete available to show that merger of Railway Finances with General Finances (RF-GF) in 2017-18 has changed IR’s fortunes.
The merger drew curtains on tradition of presenting separate rail budget in Parliament. This has derailed exhaustive debate and analysis of railways’ health that always followed presentation of the Rail Budget.
RF-GF integration, of course, fits well into NDA Government’s bigger game-plan to disclose minimum on economy to avoid criticism. The decline in transparency in the performance review of Railways is, however, letting its problems fester and worsen.
IR’s finances have been mentioned in Union Budget in the same way as the references to other departmental undertakings. The ‘Railways Budget at a Glance’ (RBAG) that used to a separate document under the Rail Budget Set of papers appears on 260th page of Expenditure Budget 2020-21 Volume I.
RBAG shows IR’s net revenue at Rs 3811 crore under revised estimate (RE) for 2019-20, which is 57.81% lesser than Budget Estimate (BE) of Rs 9035 crore. RE is slightly higher than actual net revenue of Rs 3773.86 crore earned in preceding year.
Read more: Railways Fails to Stop Downslide on Uphill Route
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Created on Saturday, 27 October 2018 09:28
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(A slide from Rail Safety Presentation. Image Courtesy: RDSO)
“Could there have been an auditory distraction on approach to the signal”?
“Was there anything related to the cab environment that could have distracted the loco pilot”?
“Is there evidence that the loco pilot was distracted by any in cab activity, such as reading a document...”?
These are three questions out of the 57 standard questions that form part of any departmental inquiry into any accident due to signal passing at danger (SPAD).
Such questions would get rephrased if Modi Government orders an independent probe into Amritsar tragedy in which a speeding train mowed down 62 persons. The victims were watching effigies burning & fireworks at Dussehra ground adjoining railway lines.
In this instant case, a few relevant issues that must be answered to public are:
Were loco pilots distracted by light and noise of Dussehra festivities? Was Vigilance Control Device (VCD) functioning or was it deactivated by loco pilots?
VCD records actions of loco pilots and alerts them for their deviant behavior.
VCD can automatically apply emergency brakes, if pilots ignore its warnings. A passenger train moving at speed of 100 Kilometres/hour requires emergency braking distance of 750 metres.
Read more: Lakhs of Rail Track Deaths Should Trigger Safety Reforms
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Created on Monday, 23 July 2018 07:31
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(Image courtesy: narendramodi.in)
The Railways’ cup of financial woes is brimming. It does not expect turnaround in the situation over a couple of years. The merger of Rail budget into Union Budget has not facilitated any operational improvement in its working.
Missed revenue targets, expenditure overshoots and revenue leakages, including digital payment of salaries to ghost employees, have put the Railways Ministry on the edge.
It is also rattled by pension backlogs & excess payments, accounting discrepancies, digital slippages and GST accounting errors. The list of challenges is long and daunting.
Today, even the Railway Board (RB) does not have full grasp over the magnitude and diversity of the problems. Such irritants flow & grow seamlessly through Railways’ gargantuan network. In the current financial year, RB has thus embarked on a journey to discover true picture of State of Railways.
To facilitate “truthful reporting of asset failures & train punctuality” by 17 zonal railways (ZRs), RB is treating current financial year as “Zero Year”. It means RB would make no comparison of any ZR’s performance in 2018-19 with past record of failure indicators such as diesel loco failure, wagon detachment and signal failure. Such failures & safety indicators are specified in the annual memorandum of understanding between RB and ZRs.
As put by RB in an internal communication, “this move should encourage zonal railways to report truthfully and not worry about adverse comparisons with last year’s figures. It may be appreciated that until and unless an honest and realistic picture of the present state of affairs prevailing on the system is generated, any kind of improvement will not be possible”.
Read more: Railways Caught in Vortex of Troubles
