The Indian Railways (IR) has floated tenders worth Rs 2,700 crore in August for the installation of the indigenous Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system, or Kavach, across 12 states, multiple officials aware of the development told Moneycontrol.
The renewed push for the Kavach comes in the wake of several train accidents in India in the past year, including the Kanchanjunga Express collision, where nine people died and 41 were injured.
"Tenders for installing Kavach systems across 5,000 km have been floated in August and will be awarded by the end of October," a senior government official said, adding that the work will likely be completed in the next 12-18 months.
The IR has floated 18 tenders for the installation of Kavach across Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Jharkhand, per documents seen by Moneycontrol.
Apart from these, the IR has also floated two tenders for Kavach-related infrastructure in Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh.
The national carrier has also floated a tender worth Rs 25 crore to install Kavach systems on 30 train sets at the Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala, Punjab.
The cost for the provision of trackside, including station equipment for Kavach is approximately Rs 50 lakh per km, and the cost for the provision of Kavach equipment on locomotives is Rs 70 lakh per locomotive.
Slow rollout
The latest tenders are the first Kavach tenders awarded by the government after December 2022, when tenders for the installation of Kavach systems over 3,000 km were awarded.
It’s been four years since the Indian Railways began deploying the device, yet by early August, Kavach had been installed only on 1,456 km of the South Central Railway, accounting for just three percent of the national rail network, along with 144 locomotives.
An IR official said the national carrier will float a second batch of Kavach tenders by January 2025 after the current lot is awarded, and it has already started preparatory work including surveys, detailed project report (DPRs), and drawing up of detailed estimates for another 6,000 km.
Senior railway officials have frequently attributed the slow rollout of Kavach to the capacity constraints of the existing vendors, and the lengthy process for onboarding new ones.
Officials explained that several moving parts of the Kavach system need to be synced across data centres, tracks, and locomotives. Also, they must be synced in accordance with train speed, weight, and type — i.e., goods or passenger train.
Earlier this month, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had said that the Indian Railways was planning to expedite the rollout of the latest version of Kavach this year itself by issuing tenders for the installation of Kavach 4.0 in 20,000 locomotives.
“Two bulk tenders for 10,000 locomotives each would be issued soon. We aim to close one by October. We sanctioned this capacity last month after Kavach 4.0 was approved by the RDSO (Research Designs and Standards Organisation). The idea is to ensure seamless coverage. Along with the locomotives, 3,000 km of tracks would also have the new system,” Vaishnaw had said on August 7 at a press conference in Delhi.
He added that the existing network running on earlier versions of Kavach would also be upgraded to the latest one.
“In the next four years, Kavach will cover all types of geographical territories and locomotives. New-age locomotives will come with Kavach 4.0 pre-installed. In four years, we will have Kavach on 20,000 locomotives,” the minister had said.
According to an IR report, the work is to be undertaken in a ‘structured mission mode,’ and the ATP will be installed on 44,000 kms of tracks over the next five years. Thus far, Kavach tenders have been awarded for the Delhi–Mumbai and Delhi–Howrah corridors (approximately 3,000 km) and the work is on.
The programme will use the latest version, Kavach 4.0, which was approved by the RDSO on July 17 and presented to Vaishnaw in the first week of August.
In the 2022-23 budget, the union government had announced the rapid rollout of Kavach over 2,000 route-km initially, with a view to rolling out the system across the ‘Golden Quadrilateral’ by 2027-28. This includes around 34,000 track-km on arterial routes linking the country’s four metros — Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata, along with the north-south and east-west diagonals.
Funding for the deployment of Kavach 4.0 was increased to Rs 1.08 lakh crore in 2024-25 to enable its installation in about 10,000 route-km over the next two years, ramping up to between 5,000 and 5,500 km per year 2025-26 onwards.
Renewed push
Kavach (meaning armour) was developed by the RDSO in partnership with three Indian companies — Medha Servo, HBL Power Systems, and Kernex. The first version, designated the Train Collision Avoidance System, underwent field trials in 2015-16 before specifications were formalised in March 2017. It was finally approved in October 2019, when the SIL-4 safety certification was secured, and the technology was officially adopted as the national ATP system in 2020.
The renewed push for Kavach comes in the backdrop of several train collisions and former rail and industry experts calling for the government to shift its focus to safety.
On June 17, at least nine people were killed and 41 injured when a goods train rammed the Kanchanjunga Express in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district. A year earlier, around 300 people were killed and over a thousand injured when two passenger trains and a goods train collided in a horrific accident in Odisha’s Balasore.
As of now, Medha Servo, HBL Power Systems, and Kernex Microsystems are the only three companies with the rights to deploy Kavach. India's ability to deploy this technology is expected to get a fillip as two more companies are expected to get approvals for implementation.
Experts, including former Railway Board Chairman Ashwani Lohani, have called for making safety the number one priority of the railways.
“The Kanchanjunga Express accident, like those earlier, is not merely a technical failure or lapse, nor can the blame only be apportioned on the human resource; the fact remains that such lapses arise out of the manner in which the organisation is governed,” Lohani has said.
Similarly, Swapnil Garg, a former officer of the Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers, said that the recent train crashes should serve as a wake-up call, and the railways and the authorities should take a fresh and hard look at the lax safety culture.
However, Garg said he does not expect things to change overnight. ``The Indian railway system is huge and it will take time to make it safer, but we need to be serious about it,'' he added.
Alok Kumar Verma, who has retired from the Indian Railways Service of Engineers, said the country’s railway network is being neglected, and the consequences have been disastrous. He said the railways are being ignored while airports and highways are being given a huge push.
The Indian rail system, which is the only affordable option for millions, "ranks low" globally in terms of safety, Verma said, adding that it is comparable to less developed countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo or Nigeria.
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