Train accidents: Derailments the overwhelming cause, lack of track maintenance major reason, said CAG report
A CAG report presented in Parliament last December detailed the type of accidents that have occurred in the recent past, saying that derailments accounted for three out of every four accidents, for which track maintenance was majorly responsible, and also that there was a major shortfall in the safety-specific fund, Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK).
An audit report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), ‘Derailment in Indian Railways’, tabled in Parliament on December 21, 2022 that the major factor responsible for derailments was related to “maintenance of tracks”.
Now that another railway disaster has happened, one of several in the nine years of the Narendra Modi government, it would do well for the decision-makers, both in the government and the Indian Railways, to examine this report more carefully and take remedial steps as quickly as possible.
The report said three in four of ‘Consequential Train Accidents’ across the country between 2017-18 and 2020-21 were caused by derailments.
There were 217 ‘Consequential Train Accidents’ during this period, and 1,800 ‘Other Train Accidents’.
The report said the Railway Board classifies train accidents into two categories: ‘Consequential Train Accidents’, involving loss of human life, human injury, loss of Railway property and interruption to railway traffic, and ‘Other Train Accidents’.
Of the 217 ‘Consequential Train Accidents’, 163 were due to derailments, which is around 75 per cent of the total consequential accidents. Of the 1,800 ‘Other Train Accidents’, derailments accounted for 1,229, or around 68 per cent, of the accidents.
Therefore, taken as a whole, derailments comprised 69 per cent, or more than three in four, of the accidents.
The report also delved into the causes. It identified “23 factors”, of which the top one was ‘maintenance of track’, followed by ‘deviation of track parameters beyond permissible limits’ and ‘bad driving/over speeding’.
The CAG report also had a damning section on the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK), formed in financial year 2017-18, expressly for the purpose of railway safety.
It said, for the period from 2017-18 to 2020-21, the contribution to the fund from revenue from internal resources of the Railways fell short “to the tune of Rs 15,775 crore (78.88 per cent) out of the total share of Rs 20,000 crore”, which had “defeated the primary objective of creation of RRSK to support absolute safety in Railways”.
The funding for RRSK for the first five years (2017-18 to 2021-22) was planned to be Rs 1 lakh crore, or Rs 20,000 crore per year, of which Rs 15,000 crore was to come from ‘Gross Budgetary Support’ and Rs 5,000 crore from ‘Railways Internal Resources’.
