Lalu Prasad’s improved railway security system gathers dust under Mamata Banerjee

Two years after the railways first planned to implement the improved technical security system, the project has not yet taken off.

There was a change of guard in the railway ministry during these two years, but both the former and the current bosses could not get the system implemented.

Sources said, in 2007, the then railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav appointed technical consultant agency Consulting Engineering Services India Pvt Ltd (CESIPL) to install the improved technical security system in Indian Railways. CESIPL, which surveyed similar systems in the western countries, submitted a blue-print for the project within less than a year.

The project did not move further in the advent of 2009 general election.

After Mamata Banerjee took over as railway minster, there were a series of transfers among the top department officials, which delayed the work further, an eastern railway officer said.

CESIPL chairman and MD SS Chakraborty said, a few months back Mamata asked the Railway Board to expedite the implementation of the project. “The matter was then referred to railway’s Research Design and Standard Organisation (RDSO). But RDSO did not respond, nor were we allowed to contact it,” he said.

The improved security system, when installed, will replace the existing manual railway track monitoring with digital monitoring.