The Rail Board has expressed its unwillingness to restrict speed of trains in mineral bearing areas of the State despite rising incidents of elephant death on the tracks.
Chief Wildlife Warden (CWW) Janardan Dibakar Sharma, who attended a meeting of the CWWs with Rail Board at New Delhi, said despite assurances to this effect in the past, the Board has shown no interest for a speed restriction in the State.
“The Board officials argued that speed restriction will affect its revenue earnings as the Odisha is a high income State for the Railways,” Sharma told this paper on Thursday.
In fact, the Railways have already effected speed restriction in Uttarakhand, parts of West Bengal and in some of the southern states but it is unwilling to implement the same in Odisha.
There has been a rising incidence of elephant deaths in train accidents in the State. On December 30, five pachyderms were run over by the Chennai-bound Coromondel Express in Ganjam’s Subalaya. In August last year, a speeding train ran over two elephants at Nambira, about 60 km from Keonjhar.
The State Forest and Environment Department had requested the East Coast Railway to go for speed restriction in elephant movement areas at night when the speed is clocked at 110 km per hour. The ECoR, in turn, had passed the buck on to the Rail Board and Sharma himself had written letters.
The Rail Board, instead, advised that elephant trackers be deployed to ascertain movement of the jumbos and avert any mishap which is humanly impossible over a vast geographical area, the Chief Wildlife Warden said.
The matter will now be taken up with the Ministry of Environment and Forests which will discuss the issue with the Railway Ministry for arriving at a possible solution.
The meeting with Rail Board was convened following another mishap in West Bengal.
