With the digital system, railway tracks can be monitored from the control rooms of different division railway offices, where the digital pictures of the entire track will be available.
The derailment of the Gyaneshwari Express on Saturday could have been avoided if the railways hadn’t been tardy in implementing a new digital security system. This could have replaced the archaic manual monitoring of railway tracks through pilot engines by offsite digital monitoring. With the digital system, railway tracks can be monitored from the control rooms of different division railway offices, where the digital pictures of the entire track will be available.
According to sources in the railways, had the system been implemented, officials could have located, from the control room, the de-bolted pandrol clips on the Gyaneshwari Express route much before the mishap took place.
The shift to this sophisticated monitoring system was proposed way back in 2007 during the tenure of the earlier railway minister, Lalu Prasad Yadav. Consulting Engineering Services India Pvt Ltd (CESIPL) submitted the blueprint for the project in 2008, after making a detailed survey of similar digital monitoring systems in different countries. Progress on the proposal, however, stopped there. An official of the Indian Railway Traffic Service Association told DNA on condition of anonymity that after the elections in 2009, the matter became low priority.
Even after Mamata Banerjee took over as railway minister in 2009, there was no progress in the implementation of the system. According to sources, there was a series of transfers among the top officials of the department. “The blue-print and the file relating to implementation of improved technical security system got shuffled from one officer to another, thus delaying the entire process of final implementation,” an Eastern Railways official said.
CESIPL on its part tried to follow up the matter with railway officials but failed to make headway. According to CESIPL CMD SS Chakraborty, a few months back Mamata did ask the Railways Board to expedite the implementation of the project. “The matter was then referred to the railways’ Research Design and Standard Organisation (RDSO), where the process got stuck again. Since then neither has any RDSO official got in touch with us nor have we been given permission to meet any of them.”
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