Derailment in Indian Railways

Derailment in Indian Railways

News: The tragic train accident that occurred on June 2, 2023, at Bahanaga Bazar railway station in Odisha's Balasore district, has highlighted the urgent need for effective safety measures to prevent such devastating incidents.

Background:
 The Performance Audit on Derailment in Indian Railways – a CAG (2022) report ascertains whether measures to prevent derailments and collisions were clearly laid down and implemented.

Key Findings:
 The CAG report reveals that nearly 75% of the consequential train accidents between 2017-18 and 2020-21 were caused by derailments.
 Factors responsible for derailments are maintenance of tracks, deviation of track parameters beyond permissible limits, bad driving and over speeding, and faulty signaling system (suspected cause of the Odisha train accident).
 The Rashtriya Rail SanrakshaKosh (RRSK) – was created in 2017-18 with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore over a period of five years with an annual outlay of Rs 20,000 crore – Rs 15,000 crore of budgetary support and Rs 5,000 crore from Railways internal resources.
 The safety fund will be used for improved inspection and safety work at level crossing, track repair, bridge restoration, rolling stock replacement, human resource development, etc.
 The number of funds allocated for track renewal projects decreased from Rs 9,607.65 crore (2018-19) to Rs 7,417 crore (2019-20), and even this amount was not “fully utilised”.

Way Forward
 Expedite the implementation of KAVACH Project especially on the Howrah-Chennai line.
 Utilise big data analytics and artificial intelligence to analyse vast amounts of data collected from trains, tracks, and infrastructure.
 CAG Report on Derailments (2022) advocated for timely implementation of maintenance activities, to prepare guiding principles for the deployment of RRSK funds for each item of safety work.