Railway Minister: Over Rs 557 cr allocated in interim budget for ‘Kavach’ installation

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw informed the Union House on Friday that over Rs 557 crore has been allocated in the interim budget 2024-25 for the installation of railway anti-collision device ‘Kavach’.

In a written reply to a question raised by Samajwadi Party MP Javed Ali Khan, the minister said “funding is not a constraint” on the installation of indigenously developed automatic train protection systems.

Apart from raising the issue of allocation of funds for Kavach installation in the 2024-25 interim budget, Khan also asked about the reason for the slow pace of installation of the Kavach system in Indian Railways and whether reduced budget and minimal release of funds were the reasons for its slow pace. He also wanted to know what steps were proposed or would be proposed to speed up the process. The minister said Kavach is a highly technology-intensive system that requires the highest level of safety certification.

According to him, Kavach was adopted as the national automatic train protection (ATP) system in July 2020 and is currently deployed on 1,465 line kilometers and 139 locomotives (including electric multiple unit rakes) on the South Central Railway.

He informed the House of Lords that the Kavach tender for the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah corridors with a length of about 3,000 km has been awarded. Presenting the progress report, the minister said that 3,040 kilometers of fiber optic cables have been laid and 269 telecom towers have been installed.

In addition, 186 pieces of station equipment and 170 pieces of locomotive equipment were installed, it said, adding that 827 kilometers of trackside equipment were also installed. Giving details of the Kavach system, he said, “The implementation of Kavach involves installation of Kavach stations at every station, installation of RFID tags across the entire track length and installation of Loco Kavach, a The communication backbone network requires the installation of iron towers and optical fiber laying throughout the entire section. Kavaci is gradually providing this.”

“Currently, three OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) have been approved by Kavach. He added that OEM approval is an ongoing process and we are further working on developing more OEMs to increase production capacity and expand implementation scale.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from associated news agency – PTI)