New Delhi, July 19: Even as the latest rail accident claimed 60 lives, the railway ministry is still prevaricating over installing anti-collision devices (ACDs) on its trains.
Officials say the ACD, designed and developed by the former Konkan Railway MD, Mr B. Rajaram, has a success rate of 99.9 per cent in preventing collisions after it was commissioned by the Konkan Railway and the Northeast Frontier Railway.
Its implementation is being delayed over the years by successive revision of norms by the Railway Board even though the technology met the conditions successfully in every instance, Mr Rajaram, an alumnus of the IIT-Kharagpur, said.
Mr Rajaram raised this issue with Ms Banerjee in a letter written April 5, 2010, drawing her attention to the money earmarked for the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO). The letter said the device named Raksha Kavach was developed indigenously and was singled out from the millions of global patents and praised as a unique safety system by the World Intellectual Property Office in Geneva.
But the MNCs which have much to lose if ACD comes in operation, have consistently been fighting a proxy war using our own retired and even working railway officers, he alleged.
The ACD pilot project was assigned to the NEFR for thorough testing, considered to be among the most challenging zones for railway safety and plagued by erratic power supplies and faulty signalling. Railway experts, doubting if the technology will work under highly adverse conditions, said if the ACD showed results it will succeed anywhere in the world. Its success silenced its critics, Rajaram said.