Supreme Court: PIL Seeking Probe By Expert Committee Headed By Retd Judge, Guidelines For Implementation Of Kavach System In Trains| Orissa Train Accident

The Supreme Court in the case Vishal Tiwari v. Union of India & Anr observed wherein the public interest litigation has been filed seeking a high-level probe by an expert panel headed by a retired Supreme Court into the three train-collision which has reportedly claimed the lives of at least 288 people who are dead and thousands of passengers are injured, the PIL was moved after two days of the horrific train accident in Odisha’s Balasore district.
In the present case, the plea was moved by Advocate Vishal Tiwari appealing for judicial intervention in order to make the Indian railways safer and protect the lives of hundreds and thousands from tragic train accidents, wherein the Supreme Court was urged to issue a writ to the Union of India and other respondents to set up a commission headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and comprising of the technical experts in order to analyse and review the current risk and safety parameters in the railway system and also to suggest systematic modifications for strengthening railways safety mechanisms.
Therefore, the counsel appearing for the petitioner in the plea also prayed for the said commission to be directed to conclude its probe and submit its findings to the top court within a period of two months.
The petitioner in the case seek for the issuance of guidelines or directions for the implementation of an automatic train protection, ATP system called ‘Kavach’, which is indigenously developed by Indian Railways to prevent train collisions. Further, Kavach in the case is being designed to bring a train to a halt automatically when it detects another train on the same line within the specified distance, but its implementation has been slow.
However, the number of coaches of the Chennai-bound Coromandel Express derailed just ahead of the Bahanaga Baazar station in Balasore district on June 2, 2023 around 7 pm on Friday and about 250 km south of Kolkata and 170 km north of Bhubaneswar – after entering into the wrong track and crashing into a stationary goods train. Consequently, the coaches of the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express also capsized after it rammed at a high speed into the coaches of the derailed Coromandel Express scattered on the adjacent track as per the report suggest.