Representative image of elephant.
Credit: iStock Photo
New Delhi: To prevent the deaths of elephants due to train hits, the Indian Railways has decided to install an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) at sections prone to elephant movements across the country.
For this, the national transporter has identified 700 km of tracks where the elephants generally cross. The tracks fall in states like Assam, West Bengal, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told reporters here.
The railways plans to complete the project, which would cost around Rs 181 crore, in seven to eight months, he said.
The IDS was first implemented in the Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) on an experimental basis in Alipurduar Division and Lumding Division. Upon its success, the ministry has now decided to install it on all of its
elephant corridors in the country.
Optical fibre cable (OFC) will be laid along the tracks, which will be used as sensors to identify the movements of wild animals at locations and alert control offices, station masters, gatemen, and loco pilots. It detects elephant presence in real time on the track using an acoustic system based on fiber optics and operating on the scattering phenomenon principle.
The system will alert loco pilots about the location of elephants so that the speed of trains in the sections can be reduced, the minister said.
The IDS can monitor unusual movements up to a stretch of 60 kilometres. It will also help to detect rail fractures, trespassing on tracks, and alerts about disaster mitigation due to unauthorised digging near tracks and landslides near tracks, Vaishnaw said.