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Parliament Standing Committee concerned over slow roll out of ‘Kavach’


There is an urgent need to speed up ‘Kavach’ related works and ensure faster penetration of Kavach across Indian Railway, noted the MPs. Representational file image.
| Photo Credit: NAGARA GOPAL

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Indian Railways (24-25) has expressed concern over the slow roll out of the indigenous Automatic Train Protection (ATP) System or ‘Kavach’ and also about the lackadaisical approach towards research and development.

The panel chaired by BJP MP from Andhra Pradesh C.M. Ramesh in a report submitted to the Parliament last month has noted that the budget estimates for R&D for railways for 2024-25 has been kept at just ₹72.01 crore. Even “more concerning” was that the railways was unable to utilise the allocated funds for research in the last two years, it said.


Also read | South Central Railway floats tenders for ‘Kavach’ in four more sections

The revised estimates for 2022-23 has been expenditure of ₹39.12 crore when the allocation was ₹107 crore and again in 2023-24, the actual expenditure has been ₹28.34 crore when the allocation was ₹66.52 crore.

The committee felt that R&D is a “prudent investment in the long term for modernisation of Indian Railways and urged the ministry concerned to take urgent steps to increase the scope of its research activities to ensure the modernisation and assimilation of latest technologies”.

There is an urgent need to speed up ‘Kavach’ related works and ensure faster penetration of Kavach across Indian Railway, noted the MPs. “The committee is aware that Indian Railways’ RDSO, in association with Indian vendors, has developed ‘Kavach’, which will greatly improve safety in rail operations. However, the committee is concerned with the slow progress of its expansion,” said the report.

Kavach has so far been deployed on 1,465 route km of the South Central Railway (SCR) and 80 route km on North Central Railway. Tenders have been invited for Delhi-Chennai, Mumbai- Chennai and other important corridors.

Stating that the first priority of Indian Railways is ‘safety’, the report highlighted the various measures to improve signalling. Advanced signalling system has been provided at 6,605 stations, covering 99.4% of total broad-gauge railway stations and the budget estimate for this financial year has been kept at ₹4,647.28 crore, an increase of ₹896 crore over actual expenditure during 2023-24.

It has urged the railways to install latest signalling technology at the remaining stations on broad gauge and stations on other gauges. The railways ministry was told to increase the pace of replacement of ICF coaches with the advanced LHB coaches for improved safety and comfort.

Railways has been making LHB coaches from April 2018 onwards and though the budget allocation for rolling stock for 2024-25 has been kept ₹54,113.78 crore, an increase of ₹156 crore over actual expenditure during 2023-24, the committee pointed out that targets for production of coaches during 2023-24 was not met. About 35,700 LHB coaches were made while 31,670 ICF coaches are being used in passenger services as on March 2024.

The net social service obligation for the year 2022-23 stood at ₹40,190 crore for the railways because of pricing of fares below cost, losses on parcel, luggage, postal and catering services, losses on suburban services etc. It called for losses on categories like catering services to be eliminated on priority basis and provide quality food at competitive prices.



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