Independent railway safety audit panel constituted

With the railway safety record getting worse by the day, the government on Friday announced setting up of an independent safety audit committee under Anil Kakodkar, former chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, and with E Sreedharan, architect of Konkan Railways and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, as advisor.

Announcing the committee on Friday, Railways Minister Dinesh Trivedi said experts in technical and high-end technology would provide an independent outsiders’ view in respect of the systems and protocol. Sanjay Dhande, Director, IIT Kanpur and G P Srivastava, director E&I Group, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, would be part of the panel.

The announcement came on a day when the government was on an overdrive on various issues. Earlier this week, seven people were killed and 85 injured in a train accident at Arakkonam in Tamil Nadu.

The committee would give its report in three months. “The Committee would lay down the roadmap on safety-related issues and would give recommendations on improvements in the system and the protocol,” said Trivedi. The railways would try to address the suggestions by the panel to improve safety on the railways.

Based on the accidents and their consequences witnessed in the recent past, the committee would examine aspects connected with signalling systems, rolling stock (of all types), fixed structures (tracks, bridges and OHE), human resource development with emphasis on training, education and research, need for a third party audit, organisational and structural changes in RDSO and in any other department, and improvements in procedural system and improvement in procedures and systems and any other item/modification the committee may desire.

In the previous decade, the total number of average passenger and freight trains run daily on the Indian Railways’ system have increased by 30 per cent from around 14,000 to almost 19,000. These include 12,000 passenger carrying trains. The number of passengers carried have increased by almost 50 per cent from around 4,800 to 7,200 million with a growth of almost 90 per cent in freight traffic from 473 million tonnes to 888 million tonnes. Indian Railways have added 450 trains, 325 passenger and 125 freight services in the last decade i.e. 2001-2010, to run on a daily basis as compared to only 30 daily trains added per year in the previous decade.

The minister also said, “As far as Indian Railways is concerned, there can be no tolerance even for a single accident involving loss of human life.”

but the substantial growth in the passenger and freight traffic handled by the system does definitely put considerable strain on the infrastructure which needs to be addressed progressively.”