Highest ever compensation for train accidents?

Various announcements, if added up, would indicate that the Government may end up paying the highest ever compensation for every life lost in the unfortunate train accident near Kanpur in the wee hours of Sunday. While victims of an accident in 2014 allegedly received ₹2 lakhs and victims of another accident in 2015 were paid double that amount, kin of passengers killed at Kanpur could end up receiving ₹14.5 lakhs each.

READ: RTI info tells a different story

The Indian Railways were the first to announce compensation of ₹3.5 lakhs for every life lost. Within hours Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a compensation of ₹2 lakhs for those killed in the accident. Railway minister Suresh Prabhu was quick to tweet that the amount announced by the PM would be over and above the compensation given by the Railways.

Unprecedented compensation

Thereafter three chief ministers got into the act. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav declared a compensation of ₹5 lakhs for those killed. Chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh and Bihar, Shivraj Singh Chauhan and Nitish Kumar, followed with announcement of ₹2 lakh each.

If all these promises are indeed honoured, kin of every victim of one of the worst train accidents in the country will have the consolation of receiving ₹14.5 lakh each, a lot higher than the victims of derailment at Chhapra in June, 2014 or at Harda, 160 Kms from Bhopal in August, 2015.

This is again for the first time that the chief ministers of the state from where the train started, the state where the accident has taken place and the state where the train was headed to, have all announced compensation. An added impetus for the UP chief minister would have been the assembly election due in a couple of months from now.

According to sources in the Railways, the 30-odd passengers killed at Harda in Madhya Pradesh were pledged ₹4 lakh each, half by the Railways and the rest by the Madhya Pradesh Government. The four passengers killed at Chhapra in 2014 June when the New Delhi-Dibrugarh Rajdhani Express derailed apparently received even less, with just the Railways offering to pay ₹2 lakh.

Significantly, in 2014, when Sadananda Gowda was the Railway Minister, the Railways had announced ₹1 lakh for the injured. But since then the amount appears to have come down to ₹50,000.

There was no clarity however on Sunday whether the UP, MP and Bihar chief ministers were announcing compensation for victims hailing from their respective state. The central announcements are of course meant for each victim and taken together are higher than what was paid out in 2014 and 2015.

Railways in need of security upgrade

At least 120 people were killed when several sleeper class coaches of the Indore-Patna Express derailed around 3 am on Sunday. The toll is expected to rise even higher with over 250 other passengers sustaining serious injuries and with many of them critical. While the cause for the derailment remains unclear, an inquiry has been ordered by the Railway ministry.

Indian Railways has often been accused of neglecting passenger safety and its tracks, bridges and signalling systems wait to be upgraded. Former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi is on record saying that the Railways require ₹60,000 crore to improve train safety but it simply did not have the resources.