Supreme Court appreciates railways for steps taken to implement ‘Kavach’ system

Maligaon, April 16 (MExN): Supreme Court of India has appreciated the initiatives by Indian Railways for the implementation of ‘Kavach’ - an indigenous Automatic Train Protection System in trains. 

The Supreme Court on April 15 stated that the Union of India/Indian Railways have initiated multiple steps towards bettering the anti-collision system in the trains such as installation of a safety system, improving the quality of tracks, training and sensitization of staff, reforms in maintenance practices, and implementation of Kavach System.

‘Kavach’ – an indigenous Automatic Train Protection System developed by Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in collaboration with Indian Industry to boost Safety in trains operations. It is a state-of-the-art electronic system of Safety Integrity Level-4 standards. Kavach is meant to provide protection by preventing trains to pass the signal at Danger (Red) and avoid collision. It activates the train braking system automatically if the driver fails to control the train as per the speed restrictions. In addition, it prevents collision between two Locomotives equipped with functional Kavach system. ‘Kavach’ is one of the cheapest, Safety Integrity Level 4 (SIL-4) certified technologies with the probability of error is 1 in 10,000 years. Also, it opens avenues of export of this indigenous technology for Railways. Maximum portion of Railway Traffic is carried on Indian Railway High Density Network (HDN) and Highly Used Network (HUN) routes. To transport this traffic safely, KAVACH works are being taken up in a focused manner on priority basis.

The High Density Network (HDN) and Highly Used Network (HUN) routes over NF Railway have been identified for implementation of Kavach. This indigenously developed train protection system has been planned to be commissioned in around 1966 Route Kilometer of length up to Dibrugarh from Malda Town, stated Sabyasachi De, Chief Public Relations Officer, NFR in a press release.