After two years and involvement of four top organisations, including the prestigious IITs for track augmentation between Mughalsarai and Allahabad Junction, the route remains a nightmare for trains. The situation has gone from bad to worse this year in particular. After the onset of the fog, trains, including Rajdhanis, are taking nearly 14 hours to cover a distance of 140 km between the two stations. Allahabad junction also caters to trains bound to Mumbai and other central and southern Indian destinations besides New Delhi and beyond.
During the last one week, New Delhi-bound trains from Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha and North Eastern regions have almost reached on time till Mughalsarai, but reaching Allahabad from there has proved to be a nightmare for them. In most cases, it has taken even superfast trains 12 hours to cover this journey.
For instance, New Delhi-bound Bhubaneswar Rajdhani took 13 hours from Mughalsarai to Allahabad. Similarly, Bhagalpur-Anand Vihar, which reached Mughalsarai around 9.30 pm on Thursday, reached Allahabad on Friday morning at 9.40 am. Around 75 trains have been running late by over 10 hours between Allahabad and Mughalsarai.
last year, the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had sought explanation from Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu over the reason for late running of trains based on the complaints by passengers and had asked the Ministry to fix the problem on priority.
The Ministry then had swung into action and a top Railway official was made to camp at Allahabad junction to examine the reasons for the delays in the NCR and ECR zone. The enquiry found that the maximum number of trains were delayed on New Delhi- Howrah route, particularly in the Patna-Mughalsarai-Allahabad section due to several asset failures like signalling, engines and track problems.
In his Budget speech this year, Prabhu had pointed that punctuality performance of passenger trains was a matter of concern for several decades. He also admitted that the Ghaziabad to Mughalsarai section (through Allahabad and Kanpur which spreads across three Zonal Railways) badly impacted the overall punctuality of the entire network.
“We initiated the audit of operations on this section to improve our performance. Some improvement is already visible and capacity augmentation in the medium term will further reduce the delays,” Prabhu had stated in the Budget speech.
The Railway Ministry last year joined hands with its engineering consultancy company Rail India Technical and Economic Service (RITES) and IITs to find a way out to solve the problem of late running of trains in the country. The initial report submitted to the Railway Minister indicated that the delay of one train on the “erratic” Allahabad-Mughalsarai section is having a cascading effect on punctuality of all the trains on the route.
The Zonal Railways administration conveyed to the Ministry of Railways that it is “impossible” for them to maintain the scheduled timings because of non-completion of track augmentation exercise.
The delay is also related to the Railway Ministry’s new caution guidelines to the drivers of passenger and expresses train that they should run the train as per visibility restrictions. In the past, trains were allowed to be pulled at an average speed of 60 kmph even in foggy conditions. .
“This year, the situation is worse as the train operators have been directed to limit their speed as per their personal visibility. The trains between Mughalsarai to Kanpur have been running at a speed of less than 10 kmph ever since the setting of fog,” said a senior railway official justifying the inordinate delay.
On Thursday and Friday foggy weather conditions in northern India disrupted over 100 trains.
