New Delhi: The train collision in Bengal’s New Jalpaiguri leading to the death of at least nine people and injuries in several has led to condemnation of Union Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s alleged inability to tackle the problems plaguing India’s train services.
Many on social media criticised Vaishnaw’s “PR campaigns” calling him a “reel minister” – a play on the word “rail”, referring to short videos uploaded to Instagram, and implying that Vaishnaw’s efforts are expended in popularising his ministry’s work, not in taking care of real problems.
As anger mounted in the second big train accident in the last year – months after the Coromandel Express pile-up in Odisha’s Balasore, that caused the deaths of 275 people and left over a thousand injured – reports pointed to the fact that a key safety measure was missing from the tracks on which the trains plied. This is the fourth major train accident in the last year.
The Kanchanjunga Express, which was bound for Sealdah when it was hit by a goods train, is on a route that the “Kavach” system to prevent collisions is not yet available on.
The automatic train protection (ATP) system, developed in India by the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RSCO) and other Indian firms, is only implemented on around 1,500 km stretch of railway tracks, Hindustan Times has reported. The country has over a lakh kilometres of railway tracks.
Indian Railways issued tenders for 10,000 km installation of the Kavach system. Till now, it has been deployed for 139 locomotives on the South Central Railway and is not yet available on the Guwahati route.
Meanwhile, a report on India Today said, quoting sources, that the goods train that rammed into the Kanchanjunga Express was allowed to cross all red signals as the automatic signalling system was not working:
“The source said a written authority called TA 912 was issued to the driver of the goods train by the station master of Ranipatra, allowing him to cross all red signals between Ranipatra station and Chattar Hat Junction.”
The report mentions that a ‘TA 912’ is generally issued when there is no obstruction or any train on the line on the section.
That the automatic signalling system between Ranipatra and Chattar Hat was not working since 5.50 am, was reported by PTI as well, quoting sources.
Indian Express has quoted Railway Board chairperson Jaya Varma Sinha has having blamed human error.
“Prima facie, it appears to be human error but we will know more after the inquiry…Unfortunately, the driver (of the goods train) also perished in the accident… So we have no authentic way of knowing what exactly happened. Whatever we can gather from the situation, it seems there was a disregard for the signal.”
This claim is at odds with reports that say – like above – that directions to the driver was wrong, and that he was also overworked.
Business Standard in its report quoted Shiva Gopal Mishra, the general secretary of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation as having said that he has been informed that the loco pilot had been on continuous night duty for the past four days and was supposed to be on rest but had been called for duty.
