Even though West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, in place of rail minister Mukul Roy, rushed in to suggest “sabotage” in the Howrah-Dehra Doon Express derailment, an internal paper of the Railways tell a different tale by expressing concern over the “design of coaches, screw coupling arrangement, maintenance intensive design” as possible reasons for derailment of bogies.
With massive shortage of staff at the ground-level to check tracks and attend to maintenance needs, the internal paper suggests that Ms Banerjee has the need to ask her man in charge of the Railways to pay more attention to the safety aspects.
An internal paper titled “ICF (Integral Coach Factory) design coaches in mail/express trains — major concern” lists “tendency of the coaches to be capsized or to climb over each other in unfortunate event of accident/collision/derailment owing to screw coupling arrangement and a relatively weaker structural strength and body-bogie connection”. In the Jaunpur mishap, seven bogies of the train derailed on Thursday, while a fortnight ago in another, a number of bogies of a train had derailed in Rohtak in Haryana.
The paper had also raised concern over “maintenance intensive design: obsolete bogie design with large number of linkages, leverages and components requiring frequent examination, attention and replacement”.
The Railways union had two months ago drawn the attention of Mr Roy over excessive shortage of safety staff to the extent of two lakh but no corrective measures are in sight, said a union member.
The modern coaches, which are part of the Shatabdi trains and a number of Rajdhani trains, are likely to replace the old ones in other trains not before 2016 or may be even later, said a senior Railways official.