As Ashwini Vaishnaw slams Oppn 'trolls', SC expresses surprise at railways appointments

On a day when an unusually combative Union railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw accused the Congress of amplifying small incidents on the railway network through its "social media troll army" to create fear among 2 crore-plus passengers, the Supreme Court of India on Thursday asked how someone could be appointed to an Indian Railways job without proper checking and verification of documents.

A bench of justices J.K. Maheshwari and Sanjay Karol was dealing with a matter concerning the termination of services of some employees who were appointed on compassionate grounds by Eastern Railway. The SC noted they were sacked as their appointments were found to be based on forged and bogus documents.

"Before parting with the matter, however, in the facts of this case, we express our surprise towards the actions of the appellant-employer who appointed the respondent-employees on the basis of questionable documentation, which was later found to be forged, fabricated and bogus," the bench said in its verdict.

In the Lok Sabha, meanwhile, replying to a debate on the demand for grants of railways, Vaishnaw asserted that Indian Railways was the preferred mode of transport for the common Indian, and the government has set in motion plans to produce an additional 2,500 general coaches in the coming months to address the issue of crowded trains.

He listed a series of steps such as introduction of Amrit Bharat trains comprising general and sleeper coaches with better facilities, a recruitment calendar to fill vacancies, and offering the middle class a "Vande Bharat-class" of trains.

Beleaguered by accusations of negligence leading to a steady stream of train accidents in the past two years, Vaishnaw slammed previous Congress governments for ignoring safety aspects of the vast network by delaying the implementation of the automatic train protection system, and also took a jibe at Congress MP and Lok Sabha leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi for making reels with loco pilots.

"Hum reel banane wale log nahi, mehnat karne wale log hain (we don't make reels, we work hard)," Vaishnaw said, as Opposition benches booed him as "reel minister" in a reference to his numerous social media posts, and demanded his resignation in the wake of the series of accidents.

"Those who are shouting here must be asked: in their 58 years of being in power why were they were not able to install automatic train protection (ATP), even 1 km? Today, they dare to raise questions," Vaishnaw said.

Later, the Opposition walked out of the Lok Sabha protesting the minister's remarks.

"When Mamata Banerjee was railway minister, and she would give the accident numbers that decreased from 0.24 to 0.19, these people used to clap in the House. Today, when it has decreased from 0.19 to 0.03, they place blame," Vaishnaw said.

On loco pilot regulations highlighted by Gandhi, he said, the average working and rest times for loco pilots were established by a rule in 2005 and amendments were introduced in 2016 to provide additional facilities.

He said the significant improvements made for loco pilots, including air-conditioning in all 558 running rooms and over 7,000 loco cabins, contrasted this with the previous administration's perceived shortcomings.

However, the minister did not provide any timeline for the implementation of the ATP named Kavach across the entire network, saying only that smaller countries with much smaller railway networks took more than 20 years to implement the system.

More than 8,000 engineers and technicians have been trained and six universities have introduced Kavach in their syllabus, Vaishnaw said. "Now, we are in such a situation that we can implement Kavach on a large scale. Tenders are in process for implementing Kavach on 9,000 km. In the next few months, we will start implementing Kavach 4.0 on 10,000 coaches," the minister said.

With agency inputs