Issues raised by the Railway safety commissioner over AC conversion are legal.
The ‘power’ tussle between Central Railway and the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) over the conversion of some of CR’s lines from the obsolete Direct Current (DC) to the energy-saving Alternating Current (AC) entered its third day. In fact, CR authorities have said that there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight to the impasse.
According to railway rules, while the railway board can condone or give a bypass if an issue involves technical matters, in this case, there can be no such condonation because what the CRS has raised are issues of legalese.
“The CRS has objected to the fact that the CR has not been following section 113 of the Railway Act, which calls for an inquiry into every accident involving rooftop travellers and also to apprise the CRS’s office of such inquiries. This is a legal issue and, therefore, even the railway board cannot do much about it,” agreed a top CR official. The CR has already applied for a condonation in the DC to AC conversion process as far as the raising of some bridges between Kurla and CST is concerned. “These bridges are very old and, therefore, cannot be lifted without mitigating heavy risks. In this case, we have asked for a bypass as it’s a technical matter. As far as the CRS queries are concerned, the only authority which can now help is the CRS office itself,” said an official.
However, that’s unlikely, with CRS Chetan Bakshi making it very clear during his talk with dna on Saturday that the nod for the conversion will be given only when the CR starts following the due process of law as mandated by section 113 of the Railway Act.
On Sunday, dna had reported how, at the last moment, the CRS had raised some queries on the conversion process.
The CR had planned to convert its lines between Kalyan and Thane and the 5th and 6th lines between Thane and Kurla terminus from 1,500 DC to 25,000 AC in the wee hours of Sunday. The conversion is important for the city it’ll allow trains to run faster and also for the railways as energy savings would be to the tune of Rs365 crore a year.
The AC/DC project: At a cost of Rs1,299 crore, the plan was to change the lines from DC to AC from Igatpuri and Pune towards CST. The project has progressed till Kalyan at a cost of Rs910 crore. The lines left are Kalyan to Thane, Thane to CST, the Harbour line and the 5th and 6th lines between Thane and Kurla terminus. The plan now is to finish all these, barring Harbour line, by March 2014
Quick recap
On Friday afternoon, CRS (Central Circle) Chetan Bakshi sent in a query list to the CR, which included questions such as the number of rooftop travellers on the CR system.
CR authorities sent the replies by Friday. On Saturday afternoon, they were told that the CRS office had forwarded the queries and the replies to the office of the chief CRS in Lucknow. This effectively meant that the plan to convert was over, as far as the weekend was concerned.
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