Railways unveils ₹34,000-cr safety infra upgrades

The Indian Railways has chalked out ₹34,000 crore rail infra plans including a safety upgrade of its network across the country. It aims at ensuring safer rail travel while minimizing collisions and accidents and for the deployment of the system along 34,000-km rail routes. Tenders for the deployment of safety Kavach across the entire 68,446-km area are being floated in the immediate future and the entire project will be completed in the next five years. The cost of Project Kavach is ₹50 lakh per km, a fourth compared with ₹2 crore with similar enhanced safety measures cost in other parts of the world. The lower cost will also help Indian vendors compete in the global market for the deployment of these technologies.

Kavach was developed by the Research Design and Standards Organization under the railway ministry, in collaboration with Medha Servo Drives Pvt Ltd, HBL Power Systems Ltd and Kernex Microsystems. The Indian Railways is pursuing the development of more suppliers for this technology. So far, Kavach has been deployed in 1,098-km and 65 locomotives in ongoing projects of the South Central Railway. It will also be implemented on the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah corridors as part of the 'Mission Raftar' project for increasing the speed of trains to 160-km per hour.