{"id":41685,"date":"2024-07-24T09:54:27","date_gmt":"2024-07-24T04:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=41685"},"modified":"2025-10-11T12:41:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T07:11:56","slug":"issue-of-railway-safety-in-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/issue-of-railway-safety-in-india\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue of Railway Safety in India"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Why in News?<\/li>\n<li>Issue of Railway Safety in India<\/li>\n<li>Highlights of the Union Budget 2024-25<\/li>\n<li>Highlights of the Economic Survey 2023-24<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Why in News?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>According to Union Budget 2024-25, the Ministry of Railways has received a record allocation of over \u20b92.55 lakh crore in financial year 2024-25, which is a jump of 5.85% from the previous year\u2019s \u20b92.41 lakh crore.<\/li>\n<li>However, the Economic Survey 2023-24 indicates limited progress on safety-related works such as deployment of automatic train protection system Kavach and overhaul of signalling systems at all stations.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Issue of Railway Safety in India:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Total number of train accidents in India:<\/strong> The six-year period between 2015-16 to 2021-22 saw 449 train accidents (excluding train accidents from Konkan Railways).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Most prominent categories of train accidents in India:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Incidents of derailments<\/strong> have been the most common cause of train accidents in India.<\/li>\n<li>According to the CAG\u2019s Performance Audit of Indian Railways, <strong>nearly three fourth of 217 train accidents<\/strong> across the country between 2017-18 and 2020-21 were caused by derailments.<\/li>\n<li>The 2nd most common cause of train accidents is <strong>level crossing accidents<\/strong>, followed by <strong>fire and collisions<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Major factors responsible for derailments: <\/strong>Maintenance of tracks, deviation of track parameters beyond permissible limits, and bad driving\/over speeding.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Recommendations of the CAG:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Development of a strong monitoring mechanism:<\/strong> To ensure timely implementation of maintenance activities by adopting fully mechanised methods of track maintenance and improved technologies.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK): <\/strong>Railway administration must follow the guiding principles for deployment of RRSK funds.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Detailed Outcome Framework: <\/strong>Indian Railway may prepare the framework for each item of safety work.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Conducting and finalising accident inquiries:<\/strong> Ensuring strict adherence to the scheduled timelines for conducting and finalising accident inquiries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Highlights of the Union Budget 2024-25:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The total outlay provided for capital expenditure:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>It comes to \u20b92.65 lakh crore <\/strong>after accounting for \u20b92.52 lakh crore from general revenue, \u20b9200 crore from the Nirbhaya Fund, \u20b93,000 crore from internal resources, and \u20b910,000 crore from extra budgetary resources.<\/li>\n<li>The majority of this fund will be spent on <strong>ensuring safety works, <\/strong>along with the creation of assets, acquisitions, construction and replacement.<\/li>\n<li>In 2014, only \u20b935,000 crore was spent towards capital expenditure on railways.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>The actual operating ratio of the railways<\/strong>:\n<ul>\n<li>Operating ratio is the number of rupees spent to earn every hundred rupees.<\/li>\n<li>In Budget Estimates of FY 2024-25, this has gone up a bit to <strong>98.22%<\/strong> (from 98.10% for FY 2022-23). This means for every 100 rupees spent, railways earn 98.22 rupees.<\/li>\n<li>The operating ratio shows how efficient the management is at keeping costs low while generating revenue.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Kavach installation:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Kavach (Automatic Train Protection System) consists of multiple components like hardware, software, optical fibre.<\/li>\n<li>As India has a diverse network of railway systems, the challenge is to combine all networks for deployment of Kavach.<\/li>\n<li>However, as approvals on Kavach 4.0 have been received, the pace of installation of the system will be rapid.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Highlights of the Economic Survey 2023-24:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Slow pace of Kavach installation: <\/strong>Kavach has been deployed on 1,465 route km in the South-Central Railway. This is just 2.14% of the total railway network of 68,426 route km and 7,349 railway stations.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Switch from mechanical signalling:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>Out of 17 operational railway zones in India, eight zones have become free from mechanical signalling.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>However, only 46% of India\u2019s 7,325 railway stations had made the switch from mechanical signalling to electronic interlocking system (introduced in India 12 years ago) till FY24.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Capex deployment: <\/strong>The capex deployment in railways has increased by 77% over the past five years, ranging to \u20b92.62 lakh crore in FY24 with significant investments in construction of new lines, gauge conversion and doubling.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Installation of signalling intervention &#8211; Automatic Block Signalling (ABS):<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>This system uses automatic signals to regulate train passage between blocks, preventing rear-end collisions and assisting trains travelling in the same direction.<\/li>\n<li>While the ABS is a proven low-cost signalling solution, it has been commissioned on only <strong>6.47%<\/strong> of total length of Indian Railways.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q.1. What is the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK)?<\/h3>\n<p>The RRSK was a safety fund created in 2017-18 with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore for track improvement, bridge rehabilitation, rolling stock replacement, human resource development, improved inspection system and safety work at level crossing, etc.<\/p>\n<h3>Q.2. What is Kavach of Indian railways?<\/h3>\n<p>Kavach is an automatic train protection (ATP) system indigenously developed by the Research Designs &amp; Standards Organisation (RDSO) of Indian Railways in 2012 under the name Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source: <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/business\/budget\/budget-2024-with-265-lakh-crore-outlay-railways-to-prioritise-safety\/article68437321.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Budget 2024: With \u20b92.65 lakh crore outlay, Railways to prioritise safety<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/national\/economic-survey-indicates-limited-progress-on-safety-related-works-in-railways\/article68433432.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">TH<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Union Budget 2024-25, the Ministry of Railways has received a record allocation of over \u20b92.55 lakh crore in financial year 2024-25<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":41686,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-41685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}