CAG teams to monitor railway passenger density
11 July 2012
statesman news service
KOLKATA, 11 JULY: Peeved over the decisions of successive railway ministers to sanction new trains on the saturated routes of Indian Railways, the Comptroller and Auditor General's (CAG) office has now decided to send independent review teams across seventeen zones of the railways to monitor and assess passenger traffic density on...
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select routes.
In its report to the Board in February this year, a high-level committee on reviewing the railways’ safety had noted: “The financial state of Indian Railways is at the brink of collapse unless some concrete measures are taken. Passenger fares have not been increased in the last decade during which many passenger carrying trains were introduced on the existing overloaded infrastructure. This has strained the infrastructure way beyond its limit and all the safety margins have been eaten up, pushing Indian Railways to a regime of ad-hocism in infrastructure maintenance.”
In an internally circulated letter issued by the office of Principal Director of Audit, Eastern Railway, all DRMs and station managers of important stations across the four divisions of Howrah, Sealdah, Malda and Asansol have been told to be prepared for independent teams which would be assessing passenger density and train patronisation, where several mail and express trains run on a single route and new trains are likely to be introduced on the same routes.
The letter says the teams would be involved in “…physical inspection of a select number of trains as part of a thematic review, 'Introduction of new trains' conducted at the instruction by the CAG of India" along with ten long distant train numbers as probable case study areas.