In the last week of June, when Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw reviewed the progress of Kavach – an automatic train protection system – it was anticipated that the Union Budget for 2024-25 would give priority to rail safety. However, the Budget released on Tuesday, July 23, doesn't reflect the government's promised focus on rail safety despite several rail accidents in the last year. Nor does it have anything to counter the issues of congestion and comfortable travel which have been plaguing the railways for some time now.

Budget 2024-25 has allocated Rs 2,55,393 crore for the Ministry of Railways, which is Rs 14,126 crore — 5.8% — more than the allocation last year. Of the increased allotment, Rs 12,362 crore have been allocated for expenditure on safety related activities. After the budget presentation on Tuesday, Vaishnaw said that Rs 1.08 lakh crore of the railway budget will be used for safety measures.  

The Union Budget for every scheme or work is categorised under two heads — revenue expenditure, and capital expenditure. The repair and maintenance of tracks, coaches, equipment, and others falls under revenue expenditure; capital expenditure covers things like Road Safety Works - Level Crossings; Road Safety Works - ROBs/ RUBs; Track Renewals; Bridge Works; Signalling and Telecom Works; Workshops etc. Of the Rs 1,08,795 crore allocated for safety works, Rs 64,763 crore is under the revenue expenditure head, and Rs 44,032 crore is under the capital expenditure head.

Railway accidents in the last year

In the last year, India has witnessed several minor and major railway accidents. A major collision between three trains in Odisha in June 2023 killed 296 people and injured more than a thousand others. In 2024 alone, there have been at least four incidents leaving 17 people dead and injuring many others. 

Since the Odisha incident, there have been several other rail mishaps that cost human lives. In August 2023, the collapse of an under-construction railway bridge in Mizoram into the Kurung river killed at least 26 workers. The same month, nine people were killed when the Lucknow-Rameshwaram train caught fire, when it was stationed near Madurai. In October last year, six coaches of the North East Express derailed in Bihar, causing the death of four people and injuring more than 70 others. The same month, two passenger trains collided in Andhra Pradesh, when one of them derailed, causing the death of 14 people and injuring 50 others. 

The biggest rail accident of 2024 happened in June when a freight train collided into the Kanchanjunga Express in Darjeeling of West Bengal and killed 10 people and injured 60 others. Last week, yet another train derailment in Uttar Pradesh took the lives of four people.

The progress of KAVACH 

While both revenue and capital expenditure are important for rail safety, it's important to note that money for the automatic rail collision avoidance system, called KAVACH, has to come from the capital expenditure allocation, which has seen a 7.1% increase from the last Budget. The Budget doesn't clearly spell out how much has been allocated for KAVACH. Nor is there clarity on how much has been spent each year on this technology. 

According to the government, until July 2023, Rs 351.91 crore has been spent on KAVACH — announced in 2020. This is despite an allocation of Rs 798.98 crore in 2023-24 alone, according to a reply given by Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in Rajya Sabha on July 28, 2023. 

When it was adopted by the Narendra Modi government in 2020 as the National Automatic Train Protection System (replacing the existing Train Collision Avoidance System) it was announced that KAVACH will cover more than 35,000 km of the rail route. If implemented, the anti-collision system will help trains run safely in bad weather, and will automatically apply the brakes in case of an emergency even if the loco pilot fails to do so, thus decreasing the probability of an accident. The technology has to be fitted in both trains as well as rail routes. The KAVACH system uses electronic and radio frequency devices on trains and tracks and railway signalling.

But the implementation of KAVACH has been slow — just over 4% of the work has been completed so far — and critics have pointed out that if the system had been expedited, several rail accidents could have been avoided. 

According to the Economic Survey 2023-24, there has been limited progress on implementing the KAVACH system, reports The Hindu. The survey says that so far, Kavach has been placed on 1,465 km, which is only 10 km more than reported last June, in the immediate aftermath of the Odisha accident. In March 2023, Minister Vaishnaw stated in Parliament that Kavach was deployed on 1,455 km out of which 576 is in Maharashtra. This is just over 4% of the promised 35,000 km coverage under the technology. 

No change to RRSK Budget

The Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK) is a central sector scheme which is another important spending on rail safety. The allocation for RRSK is Rs 11,000 crore this year, which is the same as the previous Budget.

Introduced in 2017-18 for renewal, RRSK is used for replacement, and/or upgradation of critical safety assets. It was announced with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore for a period of five years, and was extended in 2022-23 for a period of five years with a total Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) of Rs 45,000 crore. The fund is used for the implementation of critical safety works required in areas like traffic facilities, level crossings, bridges, track renewals, electrical/traction distribution works, machinery, workshops, training/human resource development, rolling stock, and others.   

In February 2024, the Railways Ministry told the Rajya Sabha that an “expenditure of Rs 1.08 lakh crore was incurred on RRSK works from 2017-18 to 2021-22. Total expenditure on safety works in the financial year 2022-23 was Rs 25,178.95 crore and the Budget Estimate for 2023-24 is Rs 30,850.06 crore.” 

FM skips rail safety in speech

This, combined with the fact that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman barely mentioned the railways in her budget speech (she uttered the word ‘railways’ once in the context of development works in Andhra Pradesh), questions are being raised on whether rail safety will be given any priority in the coming year. Especially, can the allocated amount and attention cover the pending 96% of KAVACH work, critics ask. 

The problems plaguing Indian Railways

Safety is not the only concern that remains insufficiently addressed by the Indian Railways. Over the past decade, overcrowding has become a regular occurrence in sleeper and general coaches across all Railway divisions. The people affected by this are mostly low income individuals who cannot afford an AC ticket or alternative modes of transport. But despite these widespread issues, and despite major accidents, the Railways portfolio was given to Ashwini Vaishnaw for a second time after the 2024 Lok Sabha election.

The reasons for the excessive crowding are multiple, including a reduction in the number of sleeper and general coaches. Budget 2024-25 did not mention any increase in the number of coaches in trains, or address the issue of overcrowding in any other manner. 

TNM explored these issues in our series on the Indian Railways published earlier this year.

With inputs from Cris.