Titled ‘Derailment in Indian Railways‘, the report highlighted shortfalls in inspections, failures to submit or accept inquiry reports after accidents, failures to use a dedicated railway fund on priority tasks, a decline in funding track renewal, and inadequate staffing in safety operations as serious concerns.
“There were shortfalls ranging from 30-100% in inspections by Track Recording Cars required to assess geometrical and structural conditions of railway tracks,” the report said.
Additionally, the report pointed out the costs of derailments, pegging it at Rs 32.96 crore, from reports complied across 16 railway zones, witness to 1129 derailments.
Of these accidents, the report said a majority of derailments could be attributed to bad driving.
“The number of accidents attributable to the ‘Loco Pilots’ was 154. ‘Bad Driving/Over speeding’ was the major factor responsible for derailments,” it said. The CAG report said that the Track Management System (TMS) — a web based application for online monitoring of track maintenance activities — was not operational.”The in-built monitoring mechanism of the TMS portal was, however, not found to be operational. Information pertaining to closure of the inspection notes were not filled in the portal,” the report said.
Of the 1127 derailments during 2017-21, the report said around 289 derailments (26%) were linked to track renewals.
The report, in its recommendations said that the Railways has to ensure strict adherence to the scheduled timelines for conducting and finalisation of accident inquiries and develop a strong monitoring mechanism to ensure timely implementation of maintenance activities by adopting fully mechanised methods of track maintenance and improved technologies.
“The deficiencies in setting up a foolproof system of learning from past mistakes are a serious impediment to the fulfilment of one of the main objectives of the accident inquiry reports of preventing recurrences of incidents of derailments,” it said.
