Railways relax norms for wagon overloading

Giving in to a long-standing demand of the industry, the Indian Railways have relaxed various norms relating to overloading and imposition of penalties for delays in loading and unloading wagons.

While the free time available for loading wagons for steel plants like Steel Authority of India Ltd has been increased from 8 hours to 22 hours, it has been increased by 2 hours for other customers, ministry officials said.

They added that the ministry had set a time-table where the free time would be reduced gradually over the next two years. "We want to give our customers time to improve their efficiency," an official said.

In addition, overloading of 1 tonne will be allowed for packaged consignments like foodgrains. It was being argued by the industry that a margin was needed to compensate for errors in weighing machines, the officials pointed out.

They said customers would not be penalised if the weight of the whole rake, comprising 58 wagons, did not cross the permissible limit. At present, overloading of each wagon is fined.

"If only one or two wagons in a rake are beyond the permissible weight, it is evident that the overloading is not intentional," a ministry official said.

These relaxations come just a few months after the Indian Railways drastically reduced the free-time available for loading and unloading of wagons.

According to the rules notified in March, the free-time was reduced from 7-8 hours per wagon to 5-6 hours per wagon for mechanised handling.

This was to be further reduced by about an hour from August. For steel plants like SAIL, it was reduced to 8 hours from 74 hours earlier.

Since August, the ministry is in discussions with industry players who are protesting against the new rules. They contented that it was impossible to adhere to the stiff norms and defaults were certain. This in turn would lead to huge outgo in terms of demurrage payments.

Realising that a majority of its customers were not able to meet the new norms, the ministry decided to relax them and notify the actual time being taken by its customers to load and unload under the tight regime as the free-time.