Rail accidents come down from 207/year in UPA regime to 115

New Delhi: Clearing the air on the increase in the number of railways accidents during the tenure of Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu, the government has come out with facts, claiming that rail fatalities have continuously declined during the NDA regime.

According to officials, the consequential train accidents have continuously declined from 135 in 2014-15 to 107 in 2015-16 and further to 104 in 2016-17 during the tenure of Prabhu.

"In comparison to the train accidents in UPA regime, it has reduced significantly as the average annual accidents during UPA-I, it was 207/year and during UPA-II, it was 135 per year, which has been reduced to 115 per year," the official said.

"Although every human life is invaluable and is an irreparable loss to us, the number of casualties have also seen a declining trend. Total fatalities in first 3 years of UPA-I were 759, which rose to 938 during UPA-II, while there were 652 loss of lives in the first three years of this government, which is huge decline in the number of casualties," the official said. Clearing the myths being spread by opposition parties that Railways has lost focus on safety, the official said that safety remains one of the prime concerns and priorities for the ministry.

Citing the figures, the official said, "When the NDA government took over in 2014, 40 per cent of the accidents and 60 per cent of fatalities were due to accidents on unmanned level crossings. The government launched 'mission zero accident' to ensure all unmanned level crossings eliminated by 2019, which witnessed unprecedented success."

"We eliminated 4,258 unmanned crossings in the last 3 years, leading to drop in fatalities from 64 per cent of total fatalities in 2013-14 to 16.81 per cent in 2016-17," the official said.