A disturbing abnegation of its responsibilities by Railway Board

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Railway Board’s decision to give IPA is a disturbing abnegation of its responsibility to judiciously spend the taxpayers money for the greatest good of the people and the Nation!

Alok Kumar Verma, IRSE (Retd.)

I have already dealt with in detail in my earlier post in the link below (@trains_are_best), the extreme unprofessionalism with which the Feasibility Report (May’19) for the Kerala semi high-speed line was prepared.

Railway Board’s decision to give in-principle approval (IPA) is a disturbing abnegation of its responsibility to judiciously spend the taxpayers money for the greatest good of the people and the nation.

It is disturbing because it comes despite the scathing criticism of Railway Board by the CAG and PAC (Public Accounts Committee of Parliament) in 2012-16 after it was found that the alignment for Kashmir Rail Link which Railway Board had approved in 2002 was prepared (similarly as for Kerala project) on just the topographic data with no ground surveys of the geological and geotechnical conditions which are essential to assess the risks posed by the terrain to the stability of the line and safety of train operations, and the technical feasibility of construction of the line.

Fortunately for Board, but not for the Nation, it was not then known that the Board had by then actually sanctioned five more projects in the Himalayas on the basis of alignments that were prepared in the same manner as for the Kashmir Link.

The Kerala Semi High-Speed line will not only be extremely costly, it is also supposed to carry trains at twice the speed on the existing line in the Thiruvananthapuram – Kasargod corridor.

Railway Board must immediately act to rescind the IPA and order a thorough probe into why this happened and also the accuracy and authenticity of the estimates of cost (prima facie too low), and ridership (too high).

This trend is dangerous because more such cases of extreme unprofessionalism are bound to arise in future.

#IndianRailways #RailwayBoard #KeralaSemiHighSpeedLine #KashmirRailLink #IPA #CAG #PAC