The station staff of two departments, Signalling and Operations (Traffic), are learnt to have been held jointly responsible by the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS)’s probe into the June 2 accident involving the Chennai-bound Coromandel Express, the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast and a goods train that claimed 288 lives in Bahanaga Bazar near Balasore in Odisha. Sources said the CRS report, submitted to the Railway Board Wednesday, has not gone into “outside interference” since that aspect forms part of an ongoing investigation by the CBI. Railway Board sources told The Indian Express Friday that the probe has found that the signalling maintainer submitted a “disconnection memo” to the station master to carry out repair work, as is the due process. After the work was done, a “reconnection memo” was also issued, meaning that the electronic interlocking signalling system was live. But the safety protocol of testing the signalling system before allowing a train to pass was not followed, sources said Moreover, the signalling staff continued to attend to the work even after the reconnection memo was issued, the sources said, adding that the responsibility of the accident, therefore, fell jointly on the station’s operations staff as well as the signalling maintenance staff. The report is also learnt to have found lapses in the protocols in vogue to access the relay room which is the nerve centre of the electronic interlocking signalling system for which both the signalling staff and the station master are accountable in the railway system. “It is the protocol that whenever maintenance of assets of any nature is carried out, the operations staff is also responsible for the safety of trains along with the engineering staff concerned, be it track-related or signalling related,” a senior Railway Board official said. In one of the worst train accidents in recent years, the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express entered the loop line of the Bahanaga Bazar station instead of the designated main line and rammed into a stationary goods train. The train derailed and parts of it hit another train, the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast, which also derailed, resulting in high casualty figures. The Coromandel Express had a green signal for the main line but the point, or the track apparatus that determines the direction of a train, remained wrongly directed to the loop line, leading to the accident. Days later, the Railway Board transferred Kharagpur Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) Shujat Hashmi and South Eastern Railway heads of the departments of Signalling, Safety, Security, Commercial. On Friday, South Eastern Railway General Manager Archana Joshi was transferred as General Manager of Rail Wheel Plant, Bengaluru. Additional General Manager of North Eastern Railway A K Mishra was appointed the new GM of South Eastern Railway. A K Choudhary, Commissioner of Railway Safety, South Eastern Zone, did not respond to calls and text messages for comment. A Railway Board spokesperson said, “The (CRS) report will be examined.”
