RAILWAY ENGINEERS’ BLIND SPOT, FROM LUMDING TO LEH

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HOW TOP RAILWAY OFFICERS DECIDED TO CONCEAL RAILWAY’S FAILURES IN THE PLANNING AND SURVEY STAGE OF THE KASHMIR RAIL LINK PROJECT

If you haven’t seen this video, please see it now. This is news about the brain storming session which was held on 23.06.2008 to discuss the proposal to suspend construction and undertake a thorough review of the alignment of the Katra-Banihal Kashmir rail link.

The following key top officials were present in this meeting:

  1. GM/Northern Railway.

  2. GM/Southern Railway (He was incharge of the project in the crucial first 4 years).

  3. Two Retired Member Engineering (ME) Railway Board, who served as ME in the first 5 years of the project.

  4. MD/KRCL & MD/IRCON (KRCL and IRCON are the lead contractors for construction of the Kashmir rail link.)

  5. Several top officers of NR, KRCL and IRCON, serving and retired.

  6. Several consultants.

Except the CAO of the project, everybody argued that the alignment should not be changed.

MD/KRCL, MD/IRCON and R.R.Jaruhar, Retired Member Engineering, openly and rather vehemently advocated that the big mistakes that had been committed in the planning, survey & early stages of construction, should not be accepted as it would harm the reputation of Indian Railway.

Hear the tone and tenor of their voice to understand how serious these officials were about committing this gross misconduct.

That the views expressed in this session prevailed is evident from the following facts:

The two individuals who attended this session as GM/NR and GM/SR became members of Railway Board and took decisions a year later in May-June, 2009 that scuttled the review of alignment with the result that though about 3/4th of the alignment was abandoned to somehow carry out construction, complete change of alignment which would have addressed the all-important problems of stability, safety and survivability, was not even considered.

Time has since shown the grave outcome of these early manipulations for not just this one project (less than 50% work done in 18 years) but also for the other six under-construction and two under-survey projects in the Himalayas.

It is quite likely that because of the blind spot that renders them incapable of understanding the risks posed by the terrain and the geohazards in the Himalayas, the top ranking IRSE officers present in this meeting failed to fully understand the extent and magnitude of the stability and safety risks.

But, rather than making a sincere effort to acknowledge the past mistakes and work on removing the blind spot, these top level officers of the IRSE cadre thought it better to not acknowledge the past mistakes and lie that the alignment was workable with nothing seriously wrong.

#KashmirRailLink #NorthernRailway #GMNR #IndianRailway #RailMinIndia #RailwayBoard #PMOIndia #PiyushGoyal