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The Railway Board has recommended a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the devastating multi-train collision in Balasore district of Odisha, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said.
The Board said that “signalling interference” had been identified as the main cause of the accident, which claimed 275 lives and left more than 1,000 injured. It added that sabotage had not been ruled out.
“Keeping in mind the circumstances and administrative information received so far, the Railway Board is recommending a CBI inquiry for further investigation into the incident,” Mr. Vaishnaw told presspersons in Bhubaneswar.
At the accident site earlier in the day, he said the Commissioner of Railway Safety had completed its investigation.
The root cause of the collision had been identified as a problem in electronic interlocking, the operational signalling system for this stretch of the track. The people responsible for the error had been identified.
U.P. plans to create State Capital Region on the lines of NCR (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The Uttar Pradesh government is planning to create a State Capital Region (SCR) along the lines of the National Capital Region (NCR), connecting Lucknow and the neighbouring districts in the central parts of the State, with the aim of enhancing the potential of the State capital for coordinated and balanced development.
The Urban Development and Planning Department has held multiple rounds of meetings with allied departments to brainstorm on the idea and is likely to submit its proposal to the government on Lucknow-SCR, which will cover the seven adjoining districts of Hardoi, Sitapur, Rae Bareli, Kanpur Nagar, Kanpur Dehat, Unnao and Barabanki.
At the recent Uttar Pradesh Regional Planning Conclave-2023, suggestions were also floated to create six development regions in the State — Agra, Meerut, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Bareilly and Jhansi, apart from the SCR — so that the adjoining districts also benefit from these fast-developing centres.
Department officials are tight-lipped about the modalities of the proposal, but U.P. Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, in a recent meeting, directed officials to work on the formation of SCR, arguing that it will be useful from the point of view of coordinated development.
The capital, Lucknow, is equipped with state-of-the-art urban facilities today. People from different cities want to come here and make it their permanent residence.
Population pressure is also increasing in the surrounding districts, while complaints of unplanned development are being received.
In this situation, the formation of SCR will be useful from the point of view of coordinated development,” Mr. Adityanath said, asking the Urban Development Department to prepare a blueprint for it.
The State government’s plan is aimed at negating the imbalanced growth and rapid population influx in the urban centres of Lucknow and Kanpur Naga, despite these two cities being smaller than many neighbouring districts.
In the recent Global Investors’ Summit, of the total investment proposals of ₹33.5 lakh crore received by the State, Lucknow received 6.79%, while the other seven districts together managed only 3.77%, highlighting the investors’ district-centric interest and the widening gap between the State capital and its adjoining districts.
Editorial
Citizen activism that is missing from the wrestling ring (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
Over the past four months, a few nationally acclaimed wrestlers have been protesting against their federation chief, a strongman politician, who they accuse of both misusing his authority and of sexual harassment.
On paper, the neat moral contrasts embedded in the saga seemed well suited to mobilise civil society opinion and force the government into a conciliatory posture.
Yet, as the protests met a disturbing denouement last week, the spurt of ‘citizen activism’ we saw a decade ago in the Nirbhaya protests and the Anna Andolan was nowhere to be seen.
The apparent impotency of the wrestler protests exhibits the narrow moral universe of middle-class rooted ‘citizen activism’.
This brand of activism was what steadily gained currency post-liberalisation, particularly through the spread of television and social media.
Historically, the high point of middle-class activism has lain in the colonial period. In the book, Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship (2005), the historian, Carey Anthony Watt, described “a vibrant ‘associational culture”’ in early 20th century India.
Although this associational culture was hardly free of social conservatism and caste/community-based fractures, it also contained a pluralistic and egalitarian dimension.
According to Watt, the “richly variegated, autonomous” public sphere revolved around socio-economic initiatives “undertaken by urban elites of the upper castes, lower-middle and middle classes, and directed towards individuals of lower social status.”
However, the middle classes retreated from active civil society participation from the Nehruvian era onwards, as they assumed control of the power networks within the state-centred political economy.
Meanwhile, civil society came to be hinged around the framework of “segmental loyalties”, which the social-anthropologist, Ernest Gellner, held to be an inescapable fate of the ‘civil’ space in all traditional, heterogeneous societies.
While some scholars have taken the preponderance of caste/community-based organisations to claim that the country effectively lacks a modern civil society, others have appreciated the role of these organisations in aiding democratisation and exemplifying the “modernity of tradition”.
The Delhi ordinance is an unabashed power-grab (Page no. 8)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
On May 19 this year, the Union government promulgated an ordinance to amend the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCTD) Act, 1991 that effectively nullified the Supreme Court judgment of May 11 on the powers over bureaucratic appointments in Delhi.
After an eight-year long protracted legal battle, a five-judge Constitution Bench led by the Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud had unanimously held that the elected government of Delhi had legislative and administrative powers over “services”.
The ordinance removes Entry 41 (services) of the State List from the Delhi government’s control and creates a National Capital Civil Service Authority, consisting of the Chief Minister, Chief Secretary and Principal Secretary-Home, to decide on service matters in Delhi.
Decisions of the Authority will be made through majority voting, which means that two Union-appointed bureaucrats could overrule the Chief Minister.
Further, the ordinance provides that if a disagreement arises between the Authority and the Lieutenant Governor (LG), the decision of the LG shall prevail.
The ordinance raises multiple legal and political questions regarding federalism, democracy, bureaucratic accountability, executive law-making, and judicial review.
Several Opposition parties, barring the Congress, have supported the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in its opposition to the ordinance.
Congress leader Ajay Maken said that “cooperative federalism principles don’t fit” Delhi since it is the “National Capital”. In this context, it is important to examine how the ideas of federalism fit in unique contexts such as Delhi.
Explainer
Understanding the Kavach system (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
The death of over 288 passengers in the ghastly train accident on June 2 at Bahanaga Bazaar railway station in the Balasore district of Odisha has brought into sharp focus the safety mechanisms needed to prevent such tragedies.
The KAVACH is an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system by the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in collaboration with the Indian industry.
The trials were facilitated by the South Central Railway to achieve safety in train operations across Indian Railways. It is a state-of-the-art electronic system with Safety Integrity Level-4 (SIL-4) standards.
It is meant to provide protection by preventing trains to pass the signal at Red (which marks danger) and avoid collision. It activates the train’s braking system automatically if the driver fails to control the train as per speed restrictions.
In addition, it prevents the collision between two locomotives equipped with functional Kavach systems. The system also relays SoS messages during emergency situations.
An added feature is the centralised live monitoring of train movements through the Network Monitor System. ‘Kavach’ is one of the cheapest, SIL-4 certified technologies where the probability of error is 1 in 10,000 years.
The Traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS), with the help of equipment on board the locomotive and transmission towers at stations connected with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, helps in two-way communication between the station master and loco-pilot to convey any emergency message.
The instrument panel inside the cabin helps the loco-pilot know about the signal in advance without visual sighting, and the permissible speeds to be maintained.
If a red signal is jumped and two trains come face to face on the same line, the technology automatically takes over and applies sudden brakes.
Additionally, the hooter activates by itself when approaching a level crossing which serves as a big boon to loco-pilots during fog conditions when visibility is low.
News
Arunachal scraps 44 hydel deals with private players (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Infrastructure)
The Arunachal Pradesh government has scrapped 44 hydroelectric power deals with private developers who did not show interest in executing them.
The withdrawn projects, with a total installed capacity of 32,415 megawatts, will be handed over to Central PSUs through fresh agreements.
The State government had signed 153 deals with various CPSUs and independent power producers for hydropower projects, with a combined capacity of 46,943 MW.
Many projects did not proceed beyond the allotment stage for various reasons. We terminated the agreements for 44 such projects as the private developers did not show any interest to execute despite several notices served.
Fresh agreements for nine of the 44 projects, with an installed capacity of 1,300 MW, have already been signed. The deals for the rest will be processed soon.
He said the Centre had prepared an indicative list of 29 projects that were analysed and evaluated by the CPSUs such as the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation and Tehri Hydro Development Corporation Ltd.
World
NATO chief urges Turkey not to veto Sweden’s bid (Page no. 15)
(GS Paper 2, Governance)
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg called upon Ankara to drop its opposition to Sweden’s bid to join the U.S.-led defence alliance, hoping Stockholm’s accession would be finalised “as soon as possible”.
Pressure is building on Mr. Erdogan to greenlight Sweden’s NATO membership ahead of a summit planned for July in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
Membership will make Sweden safer but also make NATO and Turkey stronger,” Mr. Stoltenberg told journalists after meeting with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and newly appointed Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who was head of the intelligence agency, in Istanbul. “I look forward to finalising Sweden’s accession as soon as possible.
Mr. Stoltenberg attended the inauguration of Mr. Erdogan, who was re-elected to serve another five years. Mr. Erdogan has accused Sweden of being a haven for “terrorists”, especially members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group blacklisted by Turkey and its Western allies.
Sweden has taken significant concrete steps to meet Turkey’s concerns. Sweden has fulfilled its obligations,” Mr. Stoltenberg added.