AP train crash: Full Kavach cover may take a decade
₹5,000 crore tender early next year for fast-tracking the adoption of Kavach. These include two tenders for Kavach, on a 6,000-km network each. This is double the 3,000 km first tender for Kavach issued in 2021.
Queries sent to Indian Railways remained unanswered at press time. According to an earlier plan of the railways, top priority would be accorded to high-speed trains on busy routes in the New Delhi-Mumbai and New Delhi-Howrah sections. The second priority was to install Kavach on trains running on heavily used networks with automatic block signalling and centralized traffic control.
In the third phase, Kavach would be introduced on other high-density routes with automatic block signalling. Officials said the priority order will now be fast-tracked for this anti-collision system, which works best for heavy-density routes where trains run at frequent intervals and the distance between two trains is often a lot less than on other routes. Other than Kavach, automatic block signalling will stop trains automatically if the driver fails to see a signal.
Centralized control would add another level of manual or physical check on train operations supported by system checks. So far, around 1,445 km of network has been covered with Kavach. With new tenders, the initiative would be expanded quickly along entire railway network of around 70,000 km.
No time schedule has been set for this but even if the railway covers 7,000-8,000 km with Kavach each year, the entire network coverage could be accomplished only in about a decade. Railway minister Ashwani Vaishnaw in a tweet said that all the injured in the Andhra train collision have been shifted to hospitals. “Ex-gratia compensation disbursement started - ₹10 lakh in case of
. Read more on livemint.com
