New Delhi: Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday said that the government will make every effort to implement automatic train-protection system Kavach in the right earnest.
The Lok Sabha approved the Demands for Grants of railways to the tune of Rs 7.89 lakh crore.
Replying to a debate on the Demand for Grants, Vaishnaw slammed the previous UPA government for allegedly not doing enough for ensuring safety of passengers.
Hitting out at the previous Congress governments, Vaishnaw accused the opposition party of amplifying small incidents on the railway network through its "social media troll army" to create fear among its two crore-plus passengers.
"Unfortunately, during the 58 years of Congress rule, the automatic train-protection system was not implemented on even one km on Indian Railways till 2014. I acknowledge that many experiments were carried out, but there was no focussed approach to take it to fruition," Vaishnaw said.
Displaying rare aggression, Vaishnaw slammed the previous Congress governments for ignoring the safety aspects of the vast network by delaying the implementation of the automatic train protection system and also took a jibe at Rahul Gandhi for making reels with loco pilots.
"Hum reel banane wale log nahi, mehnat karne wale log hai (we are not the ones who make reels, but work with dedication)," Vaishnaw said, highlighting the dedication of his team over mere showmanship.
The opposition booed him as 'reel minister' and demanded his resignation in the wake of a series of railway accidents over the past couple of months.
The minister said that expenditure on safety-related issues was Rs 98,414 crore in 2023-24, and this budget has allocated Rs 1,08,795 crore for the same.
More than 8,000 engineers and technicians have been trained and six universities have been introduced.
"Tenders are in process for implementing Kavach on 9,000 km. In the next few months, we will start implementing Kavach 4.0 on 10,000 coaches," the minister said. However, the minister did not give any timeline for implementation of Kavach on the entire railways network.
He listed a series of steps such as introduction of Amrit Bharat trains comprising general and sleeper coaches with better facilities, having a recruitment calendar to fill in vacancies in railways and catering to the aspirational middle class with offerings such as Vande Bharat-class of trains.
Later, the opposition walked out of the Lok Sabha protesting the minister's remarks.
"When Mamata Banerjee was the railway minister, she used to give the accident numbers that decreased from 0.24 to 0.19 these people used to clap in the House and today when it has decreased from 0.19 to 0.03, they put such blame," Vaishnaw said.