On Friday night, a devastating three-train pileup in eastern India killed 275 people and injured about 1,000. The collision drew fresh scrutiny of the safety and viability of the 19th-century rail network, first built by the British.
DELHI — India’s prime minister was scheduled on Saturday to inaugurate a new high-speed train between Goa in southern India and the financial capital, Mumbai, as part of a campaign to modernize the country’s rail network — one of the largest in the world.But on Friday night, a devastating three-train pileup in eastern India — one of the worst transportation disasters in the country’s history — killed 275 people and injured about 1,000, forcing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to cancel the ceremony.
“The preliminary report indicated some signaling fault, but I won’t comment on it until the report is submitted,” Jaya Varma Sinha, a member of the Railway Board, told reporters in a briefing.Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also said Sunday that the Railway Board recommended a probe by the country’s top investigative agency. In India’s history, two railway ministers have resigned immediately after train accidents with death tolls similar to that of the Odisha crash.
Modi, who faces a general election next year, has bet big on revamping India’s state-run railways. In recent years, his government has renovated train stations, introduced the Vande Bharat Express, the country’s first homegrown rail service, and promised to launch India’sBut some experts have warned that the emphasis on building faster and more modern trains could lead to more accidents if the rail network’s infrastructure isn’t upgraded or maintained at a similar pace.
Akhileshwar Sahay, a retired railways official who now works as a transportation consultant, said he hopes the accident will be an “eye-opener” to the Railways Ministry. “This accident gives us many messages. The first message is to change the … machinery, change the manpower, change the management ethos,” he said.
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Indian train crash that killed 275 people blamed on signaling errorA train derailment in India that killed at least 275 people Friday night is being blamed on an error in the electronic signaling system.
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