Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi, Nov 29 (PTI) Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday said that West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who often talks about introducing an anti-collision system in some trains as a railway minister, should know that the system was a complete failure.
'Her own party leader Dinesh Trivedi ji, who became railway minister later on..., declared the system a total failure,' Vaishnaw told reporters.
He added that the system was introduced as a pilot project but by the time its complete testing was done, it turned out to be a rudimentary system.
Trivedi, who served as railway minister from July 2011 to 2012, later left the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2021.
According to reports, Banerjee approved the pilot project of the anti-collision system in early 2011 in her second stint as railway minister.
Of late, after the Balasore train tragedy on June 2, 2023 when three trains collided killing 300 people, Banerjee had alleged that had the anti-collision device been installed in trains, the tragedy would have been averted.
Vaishnaw said that a much advanced and latest system 'Kavach' was conceptualized and put to pilot test in 2016 and it is being currently installed across the railway network.