Rly safety needs a close look

It is barely five months that the railway line along the eastern coast has witnessed a second catastrophe resulting in loss of 14 lives.

The accident on Sunday happened near Vizianagram when a running train collided with a stationary train on Kantakapally station.

It was on June 2 that three trains collided on Bahanaga station near Balasore within the same circle.

The tragedy caused nearly 300 deaths and was attributed to Coromandel Express entering into a loop line instead of the mainline and colliding against a stationary train which toppled on the side track which led to collision of a goods train which rammed against the wreckage.

A report by the Commissioner of Railway Safety for the South Eastern Circle had blamed lapses in signalling for the triple train accident. The latest mishap bears an eerie similarity to what happened near Balasore and it was unmistakably a signalling failure.

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy has raised some relevant pointers by asking as to why braking system and alert system did not function, why did the signalling fail and how did the communication fail.

Perhaps the Railways authorities would go into these and other factors that may be behind the mishap.

Experts point to overuse of tracks and failure to ensure commensurate maintenance and failure to technologically upgrade the infrastructure to cope with the increase load on the existing lines and signalling.

Factors like these would need to be probed to avoid recurrence of such mishaps.