Indian Railways – A deep dive into the various reports published by CAG/Standing Committee et others

The Chairman, Railway Board quoted in the Standing Committee report tabled in the Parliament on Dec 2016

“……. One of the biggest concerns in our system is the collision. We want to avoid collision which is one of the most serious forms of the accidents.

Presently, train operations in the Railways basically depend upon –

particularly the collision part – our loco pilots. They watch the aspect of the signal and control the train accordingly.

If by any chance, he misses or ignores a signal, it may be due to any

reason. It is a potential case of accident.

With traffic going up, with number of signals which have gone up substantially because of various intermediate block stations, huts which have come up, various gate signals which have come up, loco pilot encounters a signal almost every km. of his run, almost every minute he has to see a signal and then control the train as per the aspect of the signal.

Presently there is no technological support available to him; he has to only watch the signal and control the train. In advanced countries where high speed operations are available on a very large sector they have technological support”

Below is a summary based on the standing committee reports, the CAG reports that were tabled in the Parliament in the very recent past

What Indian Railways means?

Growth of passengers and freight network not in line with the growth of the rail network

Accidents in Indian Railways

• Causes of Train Accidents
• Casualties
• Accidents at Unmanned Level Crossings (UMLCs)
• Derailments
• Collision/Signal Passing at Danger (SPAD)
• Accidents caused due to Fire
• Accidents involving animals

The report is based on facts and figures submitted by the Ministry of Railways on matters of Safety and Security and depositions made representatives of the Ministry.

Reasons as per The Ministry for the sluggish growth

• Network expansion has suffered from chronic and significant under investment as well as low internal generation of resources
• Railway expenditure as % of transport sector expenditure has come down from 56% in 7th plan to 30% in 11th plan
• Share of Indian Railways in GDP has sunk below 1%

As a result of this underwhelming funding, the network expansion has been severely stunted leading to chronic congestion where out of total 1219 sections, 492 are running at 100% or above line capacity

Areas of concern that endanger safety

• Rail facture
• Weld failure
• Other track defects
• Coach and wagon defects
• SPAD etc.

Constraints faced by Indian Railways

• Non availability of funds to create additional capacity and modernization of assets
• Saturation of the current network makes it difficult to allocate maintenance time for assets

Accidents in Indian Railways

Mainly caused due to

• Derailments
• Fire
• Collision
• Level crossing Accidents

Derailments:

Accounted for 75% of consequential train accidents

Work force position of the Civil Engineering Department of Zonal Railways (ZR)

• Accident Inquiry reports of the zone revealed that in 23% of the total derailments in ECR, one of the factors responsible for derailments was improper track maintenance
• Almost all the Zonal Railways, there was shortage of workforce ranging anywhere from 7% to 30%
• Decrease in deployment of staff for track maintenance has potential of adverse impact on quality of maintenance

System of Accident Inquiries in Indian Railways –

Not CBI, Not police, not the Parliament, but the Commissioner of Railway Safety who is responsible for the inquiry

Summary of Recommendations

Due to adverse internal resource position, there was shortage (15,775 crore during 2017-18 to 2020-21) of actual deployment of funds by Railways to the RRSK. Audit noted that the Standing Committee on Railways48 observed, “the purpose of RRSK is gradually being eroded due to non-appropriation of required funds from internal resources of Railways”. Thus, short deployment of funds by Railways from internal resources to the tune of 15,775 crore (78.88 per cent) out of the total share of ` 20,000 crore had defeated
the primary objective of creation of RRSK to support absolute safety in Railways.

Railway budget over the years:

In 2017, the Railway budget was merged with the union budget ending the 92 year old history of separate railway and union budgets.

Leading Indicators/factors arising out of Accident Inquiry Reports

Every inquiry gives its findings about the cause of the accident, fixes responsibility
and suggests measures to prevent accidents. The number of derailments attributable to
each factor has been further categorized department-wise. The cases indicated below
are combination of factors and not mutually exclusive