NEW DELHI: The government on Wednesday said it has successfully reduced the number of train accidents in over 20 years by according top priority to safety in operations. Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Arjun Munda, on behalf of the Ministry of Railways, said the average number of train mishaps in a year between 2004 and 2014 was around 171. This number came down to 71 in the 2014-23 period.
“The number of train accidents was around 473 in 2000-01 that was drastically reduced to 48 in 2022-23, thanks to a series of safety measures taken by the Indian Railways,” Munda said, adding that the number of consequential train mishaps started showing a decline from 135 in 2014-15 to 107 in 2015-16. It was reduced to 48 in 2022-23.
The minister said the railways created the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh in 2017-18 with funds for replacement, renewal and enhancement of crucial safety assets. “This corpus of `1.08 lakh crore for five years has facilitated substantial progress,” he said.
The minister said railways implemented electrical and electronic interlocking systems at 6,427 stations that also helped in reducing consequential accidents because of human error in signalling and other allied operating services.
“Not only all this, the railways, in a bid to reduce the consequential accidents, also equipped over 11,093 level crossing gates with interlocking systems and completed the track circuiting at 6,377 stations. It also equipped almost all the locomotives with vigilance control devices to ensure attentiveness of loco pilots and deployment of retro-reflective sigma boards to alert crews about signals ahead in electrified territories during foggy conditions,” the minister said.
The railways have also installed a GPS-based fog safety device for loco pilots for fog-falling times on almost all fog-affected routes. He said that all unmanned level crossing gates on the broad gauge route have been eliminated by January 2019 and intensive track patrolling to detect fractures in rail lines has also been started round the clock, round the year.