Accidents: Railways getting on right track but a long way to go

Carrying over 1.5 crore passengers daily in roughly 9,500 passenger trains operating on its 63,332-km route...

Carrying over 1.5 crore passengers daily in roughly 9,500 passenger trains operating on its 63,332-km route clearly makes Indian Railways the world’s largest passenger railway network. But with the kind of safety record it has acquired over the years, it is perhaps the world’s most unsafe network too.

In the past 10 years, 1,539 people have been killed in almost 2,000 accidents involving passenger trains running on the network. These accidents caused grievous injuries to 1,680 people and “simple” injuries to 3,157 people. Alarmingly, a good 44 per cent of these accidents were caused due to failure of the railway staff.

Replying to a query filed by The Indian Express under the Right to Information Act, the Railway Ministry has stated that between 1997-98 and 2006-7, a total 1,959 “consequential train accidents involving passenger trains” occurred on its network. Out of these, exactly 1,000 accidents were derailments while another 619 were caused at unmanned level crossings. As many as 112 accidents were caused due to collisions, another 98 related to fires and 94 at manned level crossings.

As punishment for all the accidents during this period, irrespective of whether they related to passenger trains or goods trains, the Railways dismissed or removed 353 of its staff, gave compulsory retirement to 145 and reduced the rank or grade of 1,660 employees. Another 2,955 employees were awarded minor punishments. Information on the present status of the punished employees, whether they have been reinstated, is not readily available, the ministry has said.

Railways paid Rs 56.93 crore as compensation for death and injury caused in passenger train accidents during the period. The highest compensation in a year, a sum of Rs 10.95 crore, was paid during 1999-2000.

Railways’ safety data shows the number of accidents has been on a downward trend from 2001. This is primarily because of the massive exercise undertaken to replace overaged assets like tracks, bridges, rolling stock and signalling gear using the non-lapsable Special Railway Safety Fund worth Rs 17,000 crore.

Around 16,000 km of track, 2,700 bridges and 1,500 signalling installations would have been replaced, renewed or rehabilitated by the end of this fiscal. Which perhaps explains why the number of accidents involving passenger trains has gone down from 261 in 2000-1 to 144 in 2006-7.

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Officials said some of the most vulnerable areas identified during gap analysis include receiving or dispatching trains during interlocking failures, trains jumping signals, negligence of road users at level crossings, lack of onboard fire detection and fire-fighting equipment, lack of predictive maintenance of track and signalling and infringement to track while undertaking construction activities.