Government moves fast to install latest Kavach safety system on Railway tracks

The railways ministry has fast-tracked its plans to install the Kavach Automatic Train Protection system in the wake of the recent accidents and has floated tenders for fixing it on 9,600 km of railway tracks as well as equipping 10,000 locomotives with the device in the coming months.

Railways minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has drawn plans to prevent train accidents through a slew of steps, including minimising the impact of human errors, removing the shortcomings in track maintenance and making the infrastructure robust in the coming months.

Kavach with Safety Integrity Level (SIL)-4 has been installed and activated after trials on 740 km of railway tracks (632 km in Mathura-Palwal and Mathura-Nagda; 108 km between Kota-Sawai Madhopur), tenders have been floated for installing it on 9600 km of tracks as well as fitting 10,000 locomotives with the system, said officials.

Kavach was designed in 2016 and was granted SIL certification in 2019. The SIL-4 certification was given on July 16 this year.

In 2021, Vaishnaw and the then chairman of the Railway Board tested Kavach by boarding two trains moving against each other. The aim of the test was to build confidence in Kavach. However, the recent train accidents put a question mark on Kavach’s effectiveness.

Vaishnaw emphasised that Kavach SIL-4 is more cost effective and as efficient as the European Train Control System. Kavach was envisaged as a replacement for the anti-collision device that was installed when Mamta Banerjee was the railways minister. It was declared a failed product in 2012 and discontinued in early 2013.

According to government assessment over the years, 80 per cent of train accidents are caused by driver error and Kavach is aimed at preventing mishaps whenever there is human error. A host of shortcomings in track maintenance and issues with locomotives, wagons and other infrastructure account for the remaining 20 per cent of the accidents.

“In 2023, 40 train accidents were reported, while in 2024 till now there have been 20,” Vaishnaw said, adding that efforts are on to lower the accident rate further.

Cattle straying onto tracks is also a major cause of accidents, with the current all-India figure of such cases at 800 per day. The railways ministry aims to bring it down to 200 in the next couple of years.

“Fencing on both sides of the railway track is being done. This has been completed on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai route and there are no reports of any cattle accidents here,” Vaishnaw said. With the government working on increasing the general speed of trains and introducing faster trains with average speed of 130-140 km per hour, as in the Vande Bharat trains, fencing of more routes will be a must.