The Railway Convention Committee that submitted its report in Parliament on Friday on vigilance in Indian Railways expressed serious concern over lack of infrastructure in the railways’ vigilance directorate to deal with cybercrimes. The report comes a couple of days after the CBI busted a ticketing scam in the national transporter.
The Committee said they were not satisfied that the Ministry’s vigilance directorate was foolproof as far as dealing with cybercrimes was concerned.
“When there is no requisite infrastructure or expertise available with the railways to effectively deal with cybercrime and software manipulation, the e-tendering and e- auction system introduced by the ministry cannot be claimed to be foolproof,” the committee said, raising doubts over the security of all e-platforms used by the railways.
The committee urged the ministry to induct persons with “ample experience” in handling cybercrimes, either through deputation or permanent absorption, so as to eliminate any scope of “manipulation of the system by vested interests”.
The parliamentary panel, chaired by BJD MP Bhartruhari Mahtab has 12 members from lok Sabha and six from Rajya Sabha.
The CBI had on Wednesday arrested its software programmer for developing an illicit software to ubvert the railways Tatkal reservation system, allowing hundreds of tickets to be booked in one go.