Government green lights safety upgrade of Indian Railways

The financial implication of the recommendations is Rs 20,000 crore per year for five years based on 2012-13 prices.

Written by Avishek Dastidar 

New DelhiUpdated: Feb 24, 2016, 

The financial implication of the recommendations is Rs 20,000 crore per year for five years based on 2012-13 prices.

In a major move towards safety upgrade of Indian Railways, the government has decided to implement the Anil Kakodkar committee report on safety tabled four years ago in Rail Budget 2012-13.

The High Level Safety Review Committee, as it was called, led by nuclear scientist Kakodkar, had pitched for major overhaul of the Indian Railway systems vis-a-vis safety but for four years Railways kept discussing the 106 recommendations of the report.

The financial implication of the recommendations is Rs 20,000 crore per year for five years based on 2012-13 prices. The cost has only increased.

The fact that Railways has decided to take on this financial burden at a time when its coffers are dry indicates that it hopes to get some safety-related extra funds from the Centre for this massive upgrade in the near future in the form of some handholding, sources said.

Of the recommendations, Railways has decided to fully implement 68 and partially implement 19. The remaining 19 they have decided to not implement only because such systems, as those recommendations entail, are already in place in railways.

Of the 68 points to be fully implemented, 22 stand already implemented in the normal course, by November 2015, sources said.

The Railways have decided to seek additional funds from the government for the safety upgrade. For safety upgrade of civil works alone around Rs 1.2 lakh crore is needed. Considering rolling stock and signalling upgrades, the sum would be much more. Known as Special Railway Safety Fund (SRSF)-II, this is expected to have money from both the government as well as the Railways, if the Finance ministry agrees. The last time an SRSF was created was during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government which had given Ra 17,000 crore in 2002-03. That money was utilised till 2008.

The Anil Kakodkar committee was set up by the then Railway minister Dinesh Trivedi.