Railway staff to blame, says report on Utkal derailment -Governance Now

Railway staff to blame, says report on Utkal derailment

The preliminary report says general reluctance in granting blocks to carry out maintenance work and unavailability of short margins was root cause of derailment

Vishwas Dass | September 6, 2017 | New Delhi

#report #Commissioner Railway Safety #maintenance #Utkal #derailment #Railway

Photo for representational purpose

The railway staff carried out track repair work without getting prerequisite permissions, said a preliminary report on the derailment of Puri-Haridwar Utkal Express that left 23 passengers dead.

The report has been accessed by Governance Now.

The report prepared by commissioner railway safety said the ground staff of the railways failed to provide the traffic block in time for repair of unsafe track that led to derailment of Utkal express.

Fourteen coaches of Utkal express were derailed between Khatauli and Mansurpur railway stations in Uttar Pradesh on August 19. Over 70 people were injured.

The report by CRS, northern circle, SK Pathak observed that most of the sections of the northern railway do not have provision of maintenance corridors (for more than 2.5 hours) for maintenance/repair of assets. It also says general reluctance in granting the block to carry out maintenance work and unavailability of short margins is the root cause of problem.

It stated that the departments concerned are giving a margin of only 1-2 hours for maintenance and repair work on the northern railway sections which flouts the rules of Railway Board of giving one block of at least four hours or two blocks of 2.5 hours to ensure adequate time for the maintenance.

CRS report lays emphasis on allowing assistant station masters (ASMs) to permit short blocks of around half an hour as they are at the ground level and understand the gravity of situation.

Senior officials earlier had questioned the lack of coordination between engineering, signaling and traffic wing staff.

Officials said that trackmen had started carrying out track maintenance work between Khatauli and Mansurpur railway stations of Delhi-Saharanpur section without even putting up a red flag at least one kilometer away from the site. Later, a few media reports say trackmen had sought block from the traffic wing official which denied the permission to do so because of punctuality reasons.

Comments

Other News

Boost to offshore wind energy projects

In a major decision, the Government has decided to grant waiver of ISTS charges to Off-Shore Wind Projects and extend the waiver to Green Hydrogen/Green Ammonia. This decision has been taken to facilitate wider execution of offshore wind energy initiatives, to promote the expansion of Green Hydrogen / Gree

Duty of stakeholders to provide cost effective, alternate energy fuels: Gadkari

Urging use of alternative and cost effective fuels to reduce pollution caused by vehicles, union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said finding cost-effective fuels is the need of the hour and underlined that use of fuels like bio-CNG and green hydrogen help in protecting the e

Record production of rice, wheat, and sugarcane estimated

The foodgrain production of 3305.34 lakh tonnes is estimated in the current agricultural year 2022-23 – higher by 149.18 LMT as compared to the previous year, according to the Third Advance Estimates of production of major crops released by the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare.

India`s ‘AIRAWAT’ ranks 75th in top 500 Supercomputing List

The AI Supercomputer ‘AIRAWAT’, installed at C-DAC, Pune, has been ranked 75th in the world. It was declared so in the 61st edition of Top 500 Global Supercomputing List on Tuesday at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) in Germany. It puts India on top of AI S

Ocean Dialogue a great opportunity for G20 members

The ongoing third Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group G20 meeting (May 21-23) has focused on three aspects: land degradation and reclamation of mining areas, Blue Economy and sustainable ocean management and resource sufficiency and circular economy. Leena Nandan, secretary,

Semi hi-speed trains, buses could be primary alternative to cars

We are not paying sufficient attention to the rapidly growing oil imports (from pre-Covid-19 to post-Covid, in 2022). They surged from 102 million tons (MT) in 2019-20 to 168 MT in 2022-23, an increase of 68%. India is the largest importer of oil in the world, and, at current rate, we