Of the 11,500 odd unmanned railway crossings posing a danger to human lives, the Railways have identified 203 signals as highly accident-prone and initiated steps to either man it or divert traffic to bring down deaths caused at such intersections. The action follows an order by the Supreme Court dealing with a PIl filed by one Ajay Gautam who highlighted the cause in public interest following death of several school children in Uttar Pradesh last year.
Appearing for the Railways, senior advocate Kiran Suri informed a bench of Justices Madan B lokur and UU lalit that 203 unmanned crossings were found to be “dangerous” on account of accidents reported in the past three years. In all, there are 11563 unmanned level crossings — of which the bulk comprising 8,300 exists on broad gauge. She informed the Bench that the Ministry focused on the unmanned crossings on the broad gauge segment and on a closer examination earmarked 203 intersections requiring urgent attention. These 203 accidents occurred at unmanned crossings between 2011 upto February 2015.
Among the 203, the Railways have converted 58 into manned, closed five, replaced 14 with subways, deployed home guards at 28, while in the remaining, the manning work is either on or the sanctioning is still underway. The Bench failed to pass any orders on these facts as the Railways was yet to file an affidavit stating its policy with regard to unmanned crossing and future plans to avert accidents. For the petitioner, senior advocate Dinesh Dwivedi said that instead of reading the affidavit of Railways, it would be wise to inspect the sites where manning is said to be complete.
As a matter of policy, Railways has maintained that the main cause of accidents at unmanned crossings is due to reckless and careless road users. Railways argued that although it has made efforts to eliminate all unmanned level crossings as a policy decision, the difficulty arises due to non-cooperation from the states. As roads crossing railway lines comes under the exclusive control of states and nothing can be done without the the State’s cooperation.