Three trains jumped off the tracks in Uttar Pradesh, New Delhi and Maharashtra within a span of nine hours on Thursday, the latest in a string of such incidents in the recent past.
Another derailment was averted in Uttar Pradesh after locals spotted a fracture on a track between Farrukhabad and Fatehgarh, minutes before the Kalindi Express was scheduled to arrive, officials said.
Luckily, barring injuries to a passenger in the incident in the national capital, no casualties have been reported.
The first accident occurred at 6:25 a.m. when seven coaches of the Jabalpur-bound Shaktipunj Express went off the tracks near the Obra Dam station in U.P.’s Sonbhadra district. Within hours, at around 11:45 a.m, the Ranchi-Delhi Rajdhani Express derailed near Minto bridge in the national capital, leaving one person injured. These two incidents were followed by the derailment of a goods train in Maharashtra’s Khandala at 3:55 p.m., railway officials said.
Ironically, these accidents occurred on a day when Piyush Goyal, the new Railway Minister, chaired a high-level meeting with Railway Board officials to discuss ways to ensure safe operation of trains.
The spate of derailments over the past few weeks has raised safety concerns, despite large-scale overhaul of infrastructure in the last couple of years.
Railway Ministry officials said Thursday’s derailments did not result in any major damage or casualties as the trains were approaching the stations and were therefore travelling at slow speeds. The derailments are the first since Mr. Goyal shifted to the Rail Bhavan after the Cabinet recast. His predecessor Suresh Prabhu reportedly offered to step down owning moral responsibility for two previous accidents.
