Before Balasore disaster, 11 incidents of train collisions in five years

Has paid Rs 14 crores in compensation after 50 train accident deaths, nearly 400 injuries

The Railways witnessed 11 train collisions in five since 2017-18, though such incidents account for a fraction of total train accidents.

Derailments, level crossing accidents, fire, and other miscellaneous incidents together are 20 times the number of train collisions, according to an analysis of railway safety data. From 2017-18 to 2021-22, there have been 22 level-crossing accidents, 23 fires, and 182 derailment incidents. 

The average share of collisions in the past 20 years in overall train accidents has been 4.7 per cent. 

The number of train accidents has actually come down in the past 10 years. There were 415 such incidents in 2001-02; it came down to 34 by 2021-22. 

The number of accidents shows a declining trend over the years. It dropped below 100 in 2017-18. The number of such instances fell to 59 in 2018-19, against 73 in 2017-18. It further declined to 21 in 2020-21, which saw curtailed operations because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Though train accidents rose in 2021-22 (34), they remained below pre-pandemic levels.

The Indian Railways also tracks the number of passengers killed or injured in train accidents. 

The peak over the past 20 years was in 2005-06, when 315 passengers were killed and 627 injured in train accidents. Such numbers were also declining over the years: 16 were killed and 86 injured in 2018-19; there were no deaths in 2019-20 (73 injured) and 2020-21 (no injuries either). It was not clear if the Railways include incidents such as when 16 migrant workers fell asleep on train tracks and were killed after being run over during the May 2020 lockdown.

It paid Rs 1-7 crore annually over the past five years as compensation to passengers. Total payout works out to under Rs 14 crore between 2017-18 and 2021-22.

The March 2021 ‘Derailment in Indian Railways’ report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India noted a 30-100 per cent shortfall in inspection of tracks, as well as issues such as inquiry reports not being submitted or acted upon on time after an accident.

“In 63 per cent cases, the ‘inquiry reports’ were not submitted to the accepting authority within the prescribed time schedule. In 49 per cent cases, there was a delay in the acceptance of the reports by accepting authorities,” it said.

A train collision avoidance system ‘Kavach’ has only been deployed in a limited way, so far, in terms of kilometres (km) of route covered, going by data from the Indian Railways Year Book 2021-22.

“The system has been provided on 1,445 route km of the Indian Railways, on South Central Railway,” it said. The Railways’ total route length is in excess of 68,000 km.