Marking the National Safety Day, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw today inspected the working of “Kavach — Indian Railways”, the indigenously developed train protection system at the Lingampalli-Vikarabad section of the Secunderabad Division of the South Central Railway zone. The railway minister was accompanied by Vinay Kumar Tripathi, the chairman and CEO of the Railway Board as well as other senior railway officials.
In the general budget of this year, which was presented last month, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the government would bring 2,000 km of the Indian Railways network under the indigenous world class technology Kavach for the safety and capacity augmentation of the department in the financial year 2022-23. The plan aims to give a boost to the Narendra Modi government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat.
South Central Railway says Kavach is an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection system by Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in collaboration with Indian industry. Since the stage of development of the system, the South Central Railway zone has been closely associated with its implementation, the railway zone says.
The Railways has plans to extend this indigenous train protection system across the entire rail network. South Central Railway says Kavach provides enhanced safety, security and punctuality in train operations. Besides, the system is said to facilitate automatic braking for the prevention of over-speeding of trains. The system is meant to provide safety by preventing trains to pass the signal at Danger (Red) and avoid a collision.
Before the testing of the indigenous Kavach system, the railway minister had interacted with railway officials in Secunderabad, Telangana. Recently, Sanjeev Kishore, the general manager of the South Central Railway zone had inspected the indigenous Kavach Automatic Train Protection system too — between Sanath Nagar and Vikarabad rail section, says the press release by the said wing of the Railways.
