Parliament Standing Committee concerned over slow roll out of ‘Kavach’

Parliamentary Committee expresses concern over slow rollout of 'Kavach' ATP system, urges railways to boost R&D and safety measures.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Indian Railways (24-25) has expressed concern over the slow roll out of the indigenous Automatic Train Protection (ATP) System or ‘Kavach’ and also about the lackadaisical approach towards research and development.

The panel chaired by BJP MP from Andhra Pradesh C.M. Ramesh in a report submitted to the Parliament last month has noted that the budget estimates for R&D for railways for 2024-25 has been kept at just ₹72.01 crore. Even “more concerning” was that the railways was unable to utilise the allocated funds for research in the last two years, it said.

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The revised estimates for 2022-23 has been expenditure of ₹39.12 crore when the allocation was ₹107 crore and again in 2023-24, the actual expenditure has been ₹28.34 crore when the allocation was ₹66.52 crore.

The committee felt that R&D is a “prudent investment in the long term for modernisation of Indian Railways and urged the ministry concerned to take urgent steps to increase the scope of its research activities to ensure the modernisation and assimilation of latest technologies”.

There is an urgent need to speed up ‘Kavach’ related works and ensure faster penetration of Kavach across Indian Railway, noted the MPs. “The committee is aware that Indian Railways’ RDSO, in association with Indian vendors, has developed ‘Kavach’, which will greatly improve safety in rail operations. However, the committee is concerned with the slow progress of its expansion,” said the report.

Kavach has so far been deployed on 1,465 route km of the South Central Railway (SCR) and 80 route km on North Central Railway. Tenders have been invited for Delhi-Chennai, Mumbai- Chennai and other important corridors.