Safety red flag over Laloo’s freight overdrive

‘‘If you do not milk the cow fully, it falls sick.’’ This was the rustic logic that Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav ...

‘‘If you do not milk the cow fully, it falls sick.’’ This was the rustic logic that Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav used to explain why he had increased the carrying capacity of railway wagons without the mandatory safety clearance. He said his aim was to earn the maximum revenue for the railways by carrying as much freight as possible.

Loading an extra 10 metric tonne of freight on each wagon may have brought in an incremental Rs 2,700 crore for the railways, but it has not impressed the Commission of Railway Safety (CRS), whose permission is required for implementing such decisions. Chief Commissioner Railway Safety (CCRS) G P Garg said that the century-old bridges and ill-maintained tracks could not take the additional load, putting lives of passengers at risk.

After protest by the CRS and the Civil Aviation Ministry— which exercises administrative control over the CRS—the railways have finally agreed to the required safety and technical clearance from Research Design and Standards Organisation and the CRS. This has come four months after the decision to run freight trains with extra load on a dozen nominated iron-ore routes.

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The Railway Board was set for a confrontation with the CCRS when it maintained that it was empowered to take the decision to raise carrying capacity on its own. Garg was left with no option but to write to the civil aviation secretary. The ministry declined to concur with the board’s stand.

According to sources in the engineering department of the railways, Laloo increased the carrying capacity of the existing wagons by 10 MT without making any changes in the axle load, and without considering the ageing bridges and tracks.

The CCRS said the railways are permitted to overload the wagons only by 2 MT. But this was increased in two steps to 10 MT. The total stipulated load, comprising carrying capacity and axle load, is 81 MT. The additional load took the total load beyond this.

Garg says the proper procedure for the railways would have been to approach the RDSO for oscillation trials and checking of rolling stock, bridges and tracks. With a speed certificate issued by the RDSA, the railways could have gone to the CRS.

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The railways’ defence was that the formalities were not required as the experiment was on ‘‘predominantly’’ freight routes and would not have put passengers at risk. The wagons were anyway being overloaded and it was losing out on revenue since the money for the incremental load was being pocketed by somebody else.

‘‘The railways have legalised overloading to earn revenue. But they don’t realise that with the new allowed carrying capacity being 70 MT, and overloading of 5-10 MT still taking place, the risk factor has gone up,’’ a CRS official added.