Buxar Rail Mishap: Ex-Rail officials decry negligence, poor skill

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By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, October 13: Amid claims in some quarters that the Buxar train mishap involving North-East Express took place because of the track defects, former rail officials decried the practice of diverting attention from the causes of accidents, while calling for steps to stop recurrence.

Former railway officials also charged that the spate of rail accidents suggest laxity in following rules, and also inadequate skills. Several bogies of the ill-fated North-East Express had derailed. Five passengers died in the accident and several were injured.

“Preliminary reports indicate that the derailment took place due to track defects. As per initial findings track maintenance work had been undertaken on the derailment spot on the same day,” Lalit Chandra Trivedi, former General Manager of the Railways, wrote in a post on Linkedin.

He further stated that “while for detailed findings we will need to wait for the enquiry report to be conducted by commissioner rail safety, authorities need to take immediate action to prevent recurrence”. “A bad case indeed,” remarked Trivedi.

Former Railway Board official Subhranshu was more scathing in his criticism of the functioning of the railways, while reacting to the Buxar rail mishap. He came down heavily on the trend of alluding to sabotage for rail accidents.

Incidentally, some of the railway officials had sought to rush to claim that the Bhojpur district in which the rail mishap took place is infested with the Left Wing Extremism.

“The recent trend of attributing accidents to sabotage is diverting attention from poor maintenance, inadequate skills, violation of rules, and lax supervision,” added Subharanshu, while commenting on Trivedi’s post. Subharanshu was previously an office bearer of the officers’ union in the Railways.

“There are many more accidents than what receive media limelight, cases where goods trains are involved, or where there are no injuries and deaths. Why are they not termed (victims of) sabotage,” asked the former Railway official, who has now taken up private employment.

The mishap had taken place on Wednesday night in Buxar, with eyewitnesses claiming that there had been loud noise before the bogies derailed. Since the rake consisted of the LHB coaches, the bogies didn’t mount on each other because of which there was lesser casualty, said a senior official in the Ministry of Railways.

“Why only cases, where people dire are bracketed as sabotage? Is it designed to deflect the attention from gross management failures,” asked Subharanshu.