Railways defends 'zero fatality' claim after NITI Aayog questions data

A day after NITI Aayog chief executive officer Amitabh Kant expressed doubts over Indian Railways’ claim of having ‘zero fatality’ this financial year and just five deaths on tracks in 2019-20 (FY20), the national transporter on Thursday defended its numbers. 

Kant had said in a letter to the Railway Board Chairman that over 2,000 people lost their lives in the Mumbai suburban network every year and that too must be considered while reporting fatalities.

In response, Railway Board Chairman V K Yadav said on Thursday that deaths due to rail accidents were low in the past two years. However, deaths due to trespassing and other untoward incidents claimed around 29,000-30,000 lives in the past three years. 

Regarding deaths in Mumbai suburban, Kant said the suburban service should be brought under the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK), and the design of coaches must include automated doors.

“While deaths due to rail accidents have become zero, unfortunate casualties do occur due to trespassing and untoward incidents. That is due to negligence or carelessness on the part of passengers. Railways has little or no control over this.  Efforts are on to sensitise the public,” said a Railways spokesperson. 

NITI Aayog also raised questions on the safety and use of specially created RRSK, citing there was absence of introduction of advanced technologies to improve safety using the fund. It was in the 2017-18 Budget, RRSK was introduced for works related to renewal, replacement, and upgrade of critical safety assets under the capital segment of the Budget. Interestingly, it initially faced criticism as the Railways started cutting down on the depreciation reserve fund — used for key maintenance purposes after the introduction of RRSK. The Railways had lined up a corpus of Rs 1.19 trillion over a period of five years, with an annual outlay of Rs 20,000 crore.

A major criticism from the planning body was that despite spending Rs 55,000 crore so far under the fund, there have been no major technological initiatives under this. The components of RRSK lined up for five years include Rs 44,979 crore for civil engineering works, Rs 43,444 crore for safety works at level crossings, Rs 10,140 crore for signalling and telecom upgrade, Rs 9,263 crore for mechanical engineering, Rs 9,495 for electrical engineering, and Rs 1,861 crore for human resource development.

In the letter, Kant highlighted that even though 93 per cent of the funds were utilised in FY20, most of the expenditure had been allotted in replacing old signalling equipment and no effort had been initiated for the introduction of global technologies like the European Train Control System (ETCS) Level 2. “Introduction of such a system would have enabled addition of line capacity by at least 50 per cent, thereby not only reducing congestion in the network but also offset expenditure on other capacity augmentation works,” it said.

“We are implementing such a system in Delhi-Mumbai-Kolkata and the Golden Quadrilateral,” said Yadav.

Two automatic train protection systems — ETCS and Train Collision Avoidance System — are being implemented along its tracks.