Train delays arrested, to an extent

A passenger vehicle skidded off the road at Ramban on Srinagar-Jammu National Highway claiming 20 lives and injuring 13 others, some of them seriously, on Saturday. Police said that the bus fell into a deep gorge when it was going to Ramban from Banihal.

It was very difficult for them and for the local volunteers to rescue the injured persons. Reports said that that most of the deaths happened because of delay in carrying out the rescue operation.

There have been lots of protests in Ramban, Doda and Kishtiwar areas in the recent past as the people have been demanding better road connectivity to avoid such mishaps and loss of life.

In the past few months, over 100 people have been killed in about a dozen of road accidents and most of them have occurred on the bad roads of these areas.

An Army vehicle also met with an accident in Shopian village of South Kashmir and the vehicle turned turtle on Saturday.

Reports said that 16 soldiers belonging to para-commando force of the Army were injured in this accident, some of them seriously.

Police said that all of them were hospitalised within a few minutes of the accident. Later, they were shifted to the base hospital of Army in Srinagar. Intense efforts of the Indian Railways authorities to maintain punctuality of trains seem to be bearing fruits. An internal report prepared on the actual running timings of the trains across zones between 17 and 23 September shows they are successful in arresting the downward spiral in maintaining train timings to a large extent and most of the trains are running almost on time these days.

The country’s largest transporter had come under severe criticism some time ago as most of the passenger trains were running behind schedule. The railway authorities worked to a plan and took drastic steps to check the inordinate delays of the trains across the country. The report was prepared to carry out a detailed analysis of the timings of the trains and pinpoint reasons behind their delays.

According to the report, copies of which have been accessed by The Sunday Guardian, 90% of trains are running perfectly on time in 21 out of total 68 of its divi- sions. Ranchi division has achieved cent per cent success on the punctuality front, followed by Bhavnagar with 99.35% of the trains operating through this division running on time.

Firozpur division in the zone has also registered a good performance with 87.8% success rate, followed by Ambala division with 85.17% punctuality. However, Allahabad division remains at the nadir with only 40.87% trains running on time, while Lucknow division is the second worst performer with a meagre 48.06% success rate. Muradabad division is a little better at 56.28%.

Speaking zone-wise, Northern zone, which was one of the worst performers, has phenomenally improved its performance on this count. Earlier, as many as 60% of trains operating through the all-important Delhi division that the zone houses were running infinitely and indefinitely late. But now, as per the report, 82% trains are running on time in this division.

Though a lot of improvement has been observed in trains keeping time across the country, North and North-Central zones still remain the culprits in ruining the railways’ party. A number of steps are being taken by the authorities concerned to improve their performance in the coming days. The officials have been told to take every case of delay seriously and deal with each of them separately.

Three key areas have been identified for monitoring by the divisions at their end: work on rescheduling needs of the trains passing through the division concerned, at least ensure timely start of the trains originating from that particular division and closely coordinate with neighbouring divisions to maintain the punctuality of intra-zonal trains.

As far as rescheduling is concerned, the railway authorities have revised the timings of many trains, including some premium ones. In Northern zone alone, the timing of as many as 93 trains has been revised by changing their arrival time at the terminal stations by 15 minutes to 1 hour.

Asked if the timings have changed to give the trains enough time to make up for the delay, railway officials told The Sunday Guardian that it is a wrong perception as it is just not possible given the complexities involved in cross-running of trains across so many divisions and zones. They said that it has been done due to the safety and infrastructure repair work that is being carried out at different sections.

Such work affects the scheduled arrival of the trains on major stations and thereby inconveniencing passengers who want to reach their destination at a particular time to attend a pre-fixed appointment or take up further journey. So change in timings will enable such passengers to plan their itinerary based on the time-tabled arrival time of the trains and save them from unnecessary and unforeseen hassles.

The officials also explained that the timings have been changed only for the last leg of the journey of the trains so as not to affect their departure timings or their superfast character. Also, the advance reservation period for these trains remains unchanged, they added. There has been considerable improvement in the situation of power cuts in urban areas all over the country. As per information provided by the Urban Jyoti Abhiyan (URJA), under the Ministry of Power, the average duration of power cuts in urban areas stood at 8.29 hours in August this year, compared to 13.37 hours of power cuts in August 2016, thus an overall reduction of power cuts to about 40%.

Accordingly, the situation in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar has improved in a major way as the power cut period has come down drastically by more than 90%.

The two states recorded average power cuts of 6.13 hours and 4.06 hours respectively in August. Significantly, this duration was 91.04 hours and 71.11 hours in August 2016, respectively.

As per the figures, Sikkim was ranked the number one state with the minimum hours of power cuts (0.31 hours), followed by Gujarat (1.49 hours), Tripura (3.03 hours), Maharashtra (3.12 hours) and Telangana (3.40 hours).

However, the situation in Haryana was quite bad as the average hours of power cuts in August was as high as 37.46 hours, though it has posted a marked improvement from 109.26 hours two years ago.

The situation, on the other hand, worsened in Uttarakhand and West Bengal, where there were power cuts of 26.56 hours and 10.6 hours in August this year, respectively, compared to 4.49 hours and 10.56 hours of power cuts, in that order, two years ago.

Among the poll-bound states, Madhya Pradesh recorded 4.52 hours of power cuts in August, compared to 10.30 hours two years ago, and Chhattisgarh 18.39 hours of power cuts. Surprisingly, Chhattisgarh is said to be a power-surplus state. Figures were, however, not available for Rajasthan and Mizoram.

On the basis of redced number of power cuts, Maharashtra came on first position, followed by Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Kerala, for the month of August.

Sources said improvement in power cuts was due to improved power generation. According to Central Electricity Authority (CEA), India generated 102 billion units (BU) of power in July this year, compared to 98 BU in the same month last year.

This figure includes power generated from conventional sources like thermal, hydro and nuclear sources as well as import from Bhutan.

The Power Ministry, headed by Piyush Goyal, had last year launched the Urja Mitra mobile app which provides real time information sharing on power supply.

Power consumers across the country can have prior intimation of expected duration and cause of scheduled power outages and post fault intimation of unscheduled power outages duration. They can also lodge a complaint on power cuts in their areas.