After the tragic June 2 rail accident in Odisha’s Balasore, Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw conducted a three-hour meeting on June 17 at the Divisional Railway Manager’s (DRM) office, Northern Railways, New Delhi to review safety works.
Mr. Vaishnaw instructed the officers and staff present to ensure the safety of train movement, and emphasised that it should not be compromised during monitoring of train movements at the Control Office, Deepak Kumar, the Chief Public Relations Officer, Northern Railway, said.
Mr. Vaishnaw inspected each Control Office, Section Controls, Coaching Control, Freight Control, Engineering Control, Carriage and Wagon Control, Signalling and Telecom, Traction Distribution and Supervisory Controls as well as the Data Acquisition Department.
Officials present in the meeting said that instructions were issued to plan maintenance blocks in advance, and also maintain a proper log of petty blocks undertaken daily, which would be analysed by the Divisional Railway Manager on a weekly basis.
The Odisha train tragedy had occurred when a block section was under maintenance and automatic signalling was down. Indian Railways is investigating if a proper maintenance of the manual processes had been done by the Signalling Maintainer and the Station Master. It was also discussed that all officials involved in safety works should be transferred periodically.
Mr. Vaishnaw also reviewed the arrangements for the forthcoming Kumbh Mela with the General Managers of Northern Railway, North Central Railway and North Eastern Railway (NER), along with the DRMs of the concerned divisions.
“To tackle the pilgrims’ traffic, more than 800 Mela special trains shall be operated for evacuation of pilgrims on the six main bathing days of the Kumbh, which is to take place in January 2025. Nine stations of the NCR, NER and NR are planned for pilgrims. More than 15 crore pilgrims are expected to arrive for the Kumbh Mela,” Mr. Kumar said.
