Rail Min Ashwini Vaishnaw chairs meeting with all rail zone GMs and officials over safety in railway network

New Delhi: As the central investigating agency took over the investigation of the recent fatal train accident in India in the past two decades, Rail Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Tuesday chaired almost a half-day long meeting with rail officials, especially the general managers of respective rail zones at the Rail Bhawan in the national capital.

The deadliest train accident at Bahanaga Bazar railway station occurred on Friday evening, in which around 1,100 passengers were injured and the government claimed that 278 were killed.

The Chennai-bound 12841 Howrah-Chennai Coromandel Express crashed into an iron ore goods train, derailing most of its coaches and many coaches of the express train toppled over the Howrah-bound 12864 Yeshwantpur-Howrah Express, which was passing by at the same time. Further investigation into the matter is going on.

Sources said that the meeting was held to review safety measures across the rail network once the rail minister returned to Delhi from Balasore, almost 96 hours after the incident happened. All the zonal GMs and divisional railway managers attended the meeting virtually.

Sources also claimed that there was an in-depth discussion on topics related to safety in the railway network. ‘Signalling’ and ‘Telecommunication system’ were the prime agenda, apart from track maintenance.

After the recent train accidents, the main challenges that the Indian railways are facing are equipping the entire railway network and trains with anti-collision technical armour and anti-fogging equipment, completion of pending track renewal work, filling up of safety posts among others.

Additionally, there was a discussion over the exchange of information and data and cooperation between the railways and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) after the investigation of the train accident was handed over to the central investigating agency on Sunday.

Earlier, the Railway Board had written a letter to all the zonal general managers and chairman and managing directors of Konkan Railway and Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) on Monday, instructing them to run a campaign for signal-related safety works.

Meanwhile, both the rail officials and experts indicated a fault in the electronic interlocking, the security of the relay room and compliance with its Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is being emphasised.

Further, ensuring double locking of relay rooms and ensuring log filling and SMS alerts before opening and closing was part of the agenda of the meeting.

According to local railway sources, when the preliminary investigation started on the day of the accident, the relay room at Bahanaga Bazar station was found open, which is a very serious safety lapse.

The relay room is normally manned by Signal and Telecom (S&T) staff, but it has two keys to the lock.

One key is with the station master and the other with the S&T staff. As per the rule, the relay room is opened only when no train is running. If there is a need to open the relay room during train operation, it is signed in the S&T Staff Movement Authorization Register and it is written that the safe operation of the train can take place if the relay room is open.

The Rail Board also instructed that whatever shortcomings or irregularities are found in this incident, appropriate action should be taken and the Railway Board should be informed by June 14.

Meanwhile, a 10-member investigation team of CBI has already visited the place of the incident on Monday and is present in Balasore. It has re-registered a case based on the initial FIR, lodged by an Odisha policeman Pappu Naik at Balasore Government Railway police station in Cuttack district, which mentioned: “ Due to collision of the two trains, the coaches of both trains overturned, causing the death of more than 100 and injuries to several hundreds of passengers.

The bodies and injured passengers were shifted to the District Headquarters Hospital, Balasore; the Community Health Centre, Soro and the District Headquarters Hospital, Bhadrak and the rescue operation was continued.

At present, the culpability of specific railway employees is not ascertained, which will be unearthed during the investigation.”