The controversy over the Odisha train accident refuses to die as new facts keep emerging. A day after the tragic train accident that killed 288 people and injured over 1000 passengers, reports in media claimed that a senior railway official had written a letter in February this year. Now, TMC leader Saket Gokhale has shared the letter of the copy and alleged criminal negligence on the part of Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw for ignoring the letter. However, the letter was not directly addressed to the Union Railways Minister, but to the Railway Ministry.
Letter raises important questions
Nonetheless, the letter touches upon extremely important topics, especially given the deadly Odisha train accident. The letter shows how the official who identified himself as Hari Shankar Varma, tried to bring attention to issues with signalling and interlocking system in his letter.
"On 8th Feb, the driver of 12649 Sampark Kranti Express suddenly stopped the train near Hosadurga station after he noticed that interlocking track was set to "down line" while the train was supposed to be on "up line". The driver immediately stopped the train. The letter says that if the driver had not shown presence of mind, Sampark Kranti Express would have CRASHED with a goods train which was coming from the opposite direction," added Gokhale, taking cue from the letter.
Gokhale also tagged the Railway Minister and questioned him about the ignorance.
Here are the other points from the letter
1. The incident indicates that there are serious flaws in the system, where the route of despatch gets altered after a train starts on signals with correct appearance of route in the SMS panel. This contravenes the essence and basic principles of Inter-locking.
2. It is understood that the Signal Maintainer, who was available at the Station was trying to rectify the failures. The said ESM would have opted to wait for the dispatch of the train, since it was already issued with PLCT, and then attempted to rectify the failure, by adopting the extant rules and procedures.
3. As per the extant rules and procedures, the ESM shall serve a Disconnection Memo to the Station Master, who acknowledges it and then give permission to attend any failures. In this case, why such procedure was not followed by the FSM? Had it been followed, the SM would have been alert and followed the practice to be adopted for non-interlocked working, like clamping of points, piloting of trains etc.
4. When, we talk high of ourselves that system is fail-safe, then how anybody can meddle with the interlocking gears without opening the Relay Room 11 is astonishing to see that such occurrences are happening with investing lot of money on signalling gear with world class safety attach to them.
The 8th, 9th and 10th points are most important, which recommend the measures required to ensure that a collision is prevented from happening. Read the points below.
8. "Repeated and persistent counselling of maintenance staff is the need of the hour along with detailed inspection as mandated in signal manual. Though the SSE/JE/Signal Maintainers are not classified under Safety Category by RB, while they are actively involved in works which directly affects the safety in train operations."
9. "If the signal maintenance system is not monitored and corrected immediately, then it would lead to happening of such re- occurrence and serious accidents."
10. "It is high time that some serious work is done on this front to ensure that the precious lives and Safety of travelling public and railway men are not put in risk."
