RAILWAY ORDERS ENQUIRY ON RIVALRY LEADING TO TRAIN DELAYS

NEW DELHI: The Railway Board has asked senior officials of the two zones, Northern Railway (NR) and North Central Railway (NC R ), to investigate and find out officers responsible for halting more than half a dozen trains on November 8 at the outer circle of Palwal Railway Station.

HT reported on Sunday that due to a rivalry between the two railway zones in order to maintain a better punctuality record, half a dozen express trains were kept waiting for the green signal on the outer circle of Palwal, 85km from New Delhi, on the Nizamuddin-Agra route from 4:15pm to 5: 30pm.

“The minister of Railways, Piyush Goyal, viewed the incident as a serious one and asked for an urgentreport,” saida close source in the Railway Board.

Railway sources had informed HT that N R’ s Delhi division deliberately halted trains under the NC R zones to den tits punctuality record. Two organisation s—All India Train Controllers’ Associations and Indian Railway Loco Running Men Organisation — confirmed that trains are halted due to such rivalries.

A goods train, the SBLT Special running between J han si and Jodhpur was halted for 11 hours on November 8 at U ta war station near Alwar as NWR allegedly refused to enter the train in its zone due to a similar reason.

In 2002, former railway minister Nitish Kumar had increased the number of zones from nine to 16 to strengthen railway operations. “Interchange punctuality is a good initiative towards operational efficiency but the purpose seems partially defeated if ego or inter-zone competition becomes unhealthy and starts affecting overall efficiency,” said Sanjay Pandhi, working president, Indian Railway Loco Running Men Organisation.