A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking a probe into the Balasore train accident by an expert panel headed by a retired judge of the apex court. The PIL also seeks directions for the implementation of the KAVACH Protection System in Indian Railways with immediate effect to ensure public safety. This comes as Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Sunday that the root cause of the three-train crash in Odisha’s Balasore district has been identified and the affected tracks will be restored for normal services by Wednesday.
A lawyer named Vishal Tiwari has filed a petition seeking guidelines/directions for the implementation of the Automatic Train Protection (ATP) System called KAVACH Protection System in Indian Railways with immediate effect to ensure public safety. He also sought a probe into the Balasore train accident by an expert panel.
The crash involving Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express, which were carrying around 2,500 passengers, and a goods train occurred around 7 pm on Friday near the Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore. At least 288 people were dead and over 1,100 injured in the accident.
Odisha Train Accident Occurred Due To Changes To Electronic Interlocking System: Railway Minister
The Railway Minister was on the accident site for the second consecutive day when he said the issue pertains to point machine and electronic interlocking. The change that was done to electronic interlocking which led to the accident has been identified, Vaishnaw said while denying that the incident had anything to do with the anti-collision system Kavach.
“We have mobilised all resources. I also want to say that Kavach has nothing to do with the accident. This accident occurred due to changes to the electronic interlocking system. The remarks of (West Bengal chief minister) Mamata Banerjee is not true,” Vaishnaw said, as per news agency PTI.
