The Ministry of Railways, Government of India, has transferred Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) of South East Central Railway (SECR) Bilaspur Division, Rajmal Khoiwal as the NF-HAG (Non-Functional Higher Administrative Grade) officer in Western Railways (WR). He will be replaced by NF-HAG of WR and an officer of IRSSE (Indian Railway Service of Signal Engineers), Umesh Kumar as the new DRM of Bilaspur. This is considered a significant action following the recent Bilaspur train accident. According to sources, a senior official in SECR may also face action soon after the reports of Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS).

 

Approximately more than a month ago, on November 4, the Korba-Bilaspur MEMU collided with a coal-laden goods train on the up line near Bilaspur. The accident resulted in the death of 13 passengers and injured over 20 besides incurring crores of loss to the Railways. After the mishap, CRS of South East Circle, Kolkata under the Ministry of Civil Aviation, BK Mishra was deputed by Railway Board (RB) to investigate the train accident. He investigated the site for three days and questioned the officers and employees from various departments including Electrical, Operations, Mechanical, Signal and Telecommunications and Carriage and Workshop.

 

The CRS in his preliminary report cited an untrained driver as a major cause of the accident. Twenty days after the accident, CRS, Mishra discussed the incident with Assistant Loco Pilot (ALP) of the MEMU train, Rashmi Raj at Central Hospital, SECR, Bilaspur for over two hours. On Monday night, the CRS sent his preliminary report to the SECR Zonal Headquarters and Bilaspur Division. In this report, he stated that the Railway administration was entirely at fault for the MEMU accident.

 

The department had assigned the responsibility of operating the MEMU train to a driver who had not passed the psycho test. If the command of the passenger train had to be given to someone, it should have been given to a driver who passed the psychological test. This accident happened because of the mistake of the Railway administration, which needs to be corrected. The CRS also has held the driver responsible for the accident. To prevent such incidents in the future, the CRS has given special suggestions to the Railway administration officials, including the need to synchronize the clocks of all monitoring and recording equipment with GPS (Global Positioning System) time to streamline train operations and match events recorded by other devices.