Central Railway keeps security promise made after 11/7 blasts, but victim Western Railway still totters

The Central Railway (CR) seems keener than the Western Railway (WR) in protecting itself from terror attacks. While the CR has been moving, albeit slowly, towards implementing the country’s most ambitious security system — the Integrated Security System (ISS) — across its big stations, such as CST, Dadar, Thane, Kalyan and Kurla terminus, the WR has not yet begun work on it.

Ironically, the project was first thought of after the serial blasts on WR trains on July 11, 2006 and was crystallised after the 26/11 carnage at CST.

The project calls for the integration of everything from baggage scanners, vehicle scanners, CCTVs, hand-held and door-frame metal detectors and on-duty security personnel into one giant computer-linked protection grid controlled from designated control rooms. Work on it has progressed at CST, with the control room being set up and most of the equipment coming in.

Why is the WR lagging behind, you ask? That’s because its top brass insists that the equipment be capable of working in 50 degrees Celsius in summer and minus five degrees Celsius in winter. While those insisting on this clause claim it is part of the tender specifications, those wanting the WR to just go ahead with it  point out that Mumbai isn’t likely to experience the two temperatures for decades to come.

“Security is paramount and it is unthinkable that what is fine for CR should not be for WR. At the end of the day, we are all part of the same railway system,” said a senior railway official.

This isn’t the first time the WR has faced problems with its security apparatus. A week after 26/11, when a bomb was found at CST, the WR saw its entire rented dog squad being pulled out by the supplying firm over pending bills.