Guwahati: The North East Frontier Railway has recorded an impressive growth both on passenger and frieght movement.
Business North East caught up with NF railway General Manager Chetan Kumar Srivastava as h3 briefed us about the new plans for passenger safety, security and expansion plans to international frontiers.
Excerpts from the interview is as under:-
BNE: How have North East Frontier Railway performed in terms of earning in 2022-23?
GM: If you compare with the last year, there is a 21.5 percent growth. That is a huge quantum. All these zonal railways have around 10-15 percent. That is expected. But, Northeast Frontier Railways have grown by 21.5 percent. That is now Rs.7600 crores last year earning as compared to the previous year.
BNE: What is the quantum of increase in freight and passengers during the fiscal year 2022-23?
GM: If you see total number of traffic that we have handled freight, we are basically unloading railways. We unload more rather than loading. 13 million tonnes is loading and 33 million is unloading. As compared to the previous year, it is around 39 tonnes only. It is around 13 percent more than that. As per as total number of passengers handled it is also 5 percent increase. A total of 85 million passengers we have handled last year
BNE: What are the new areas came under the railway map in the North Eastern Region during 2022-23?
GM: It’s a very big thing. The Central Government is also a priority to see that every corner of the country is connected. If you consider Nagaland, you will see that DImapur was connected long back ( more than 100 years back) by the Railways. Now, we have gone inside Nagaland place called Sukhovi that is after 101 years of the last connection up to Dimapur. We have already gone up to Khongsang. The plan is to connect all the capital cities of northeastern States. Tripura is already connected. Sikkim is a difficult project. We have to connect up to Gangtok. Siwak to Rangpo is already connected. Among other states Mizoram is left. We are going up to Sairang. If you go to Arunachal Pradesh we will go upto Tawang, This is all to a huge amount of capital sanction by the central government of 1. 20.000 crores.
BNE: Are there any new projects undertaken by the NF railways in the region?
GM: It is already told. Basically, we want to connect. Meghalaya is of bit of a trouble. As there were issue from Khasi students union. Things are being discussed across the table with Minister of Railways and the Chief Minister of Meghalaya. Hope in the near future things are resolved.
BNE: NF railways plan to connect to neighbouring international countries, how far the projects have progressed?
GM: We are trying to connect with Bangladesh. If you see that it is being connected with Mahisasan from Assam. We are trying to connect from Tripura to Akhaura in Bangladesh. In Bhutan, we are trying to connect at Gelephu from Kokrajhar in Assam.
BNE: Can you discuss the safety measures taken by Northeast Frontier Railway to ensure passenger safety, and how you have improved safety records in recent years?
GM: The more you talk about safety the more it is complex. Railway is such a business that one small mistake by one single man may cause havoc. It’s such an important issue. Though we have used technology to a very large extent. There is a project called Kavach but it will take time ( even more than 5 years) to cover everything. Our main stress on safety we have very set standards of maintenance in the railways. Everything is documented. Our core area is training and counselling our fellows to do their job in the correct fashion. Also to monitor the same by number of inspections. There is huge manpower of Indian Railways of more than 12 lakhs people. So, it’s a difficult job. Safety is a continuous process. Nobody can be relax for a day and then start working from tomorrow.
BNE: What are the current challenges faced by Northeast Frontier Railway in terms of infrastructure development and how are you addressing them?
GM: NFR is a different terrain altogether. It is surrounded by young Himalayan terrains, barreily winds are there, and they are fragile. There are so many ghat sections. Sairong is one section to which you are connecting. A number of tunnels are there. So, technology is to do tunneling. But, some are manual. They utilise the dynamite for digging and jacketing the tunnel. There is another method called TBM (Tunneling Boaring Machine) which can make make around 4-5 meters per day. But all those things doesn’t work here. A typical Australian Tunneling method is there which has to be adopted here considering all those challenges. That is a different technology and people are not trained with that. We have definitely upgraded the system. We will be utilising this technology to complete through our works.
BNE: How is Northeast Frontier Railway implementing digitalization and modern technology to improve operations, services and customer experience?
GM: I can guarantee you that NF Railway is leading zonal Railway when it comes to technology. One of the fantastic system which we have developed in our railway, we have not only experimented but we have implemented it for quite sometime. It is called intrusion detection centre. Right now it is used for protecting the elephant zones. There is large number of tracks covered by elephant movements. So, we have to put restrictions on the trains. For that we have utilised a beautiful system. We have laid the fiber optics cables along the track. There is a digital acoustic systems which is able to sense the movement of the elephant when they are 30-40 meters away from the track. This digital acoustic system continuously sends laser pulses on the fibre cables. With the movement of the elephant, this pulses are reflected back. The system has signature of the elephants. From the last October 2022, we have data of 600-700 cases of elephant movement detection by this system. It was confirmed from the foreign checkposts as well. The system is such a nice thing that as soon as the driver enters the section he is given an Ipad also. As soon as it detects the elephant movement there will be an alarm sent to the driver of the train. During the last Railway Board meeting we have been asked to expand the system to detect railway fractures. It is a cause of worry for not only for Indian Railways but all over the world. So, it has a different sound. Secondly we have remote diagonistic predictive maintenance for signalling system. You are all aware that signalling system is the heart of the Railways. Everything runs on the signal only. Any signal failure whole system comes to a stop. So we have certain remote censors on those signalling equipments installed at the fields,
Last thing we are using is artificial intelligence camera. It is developed by one of our young officers who is working in Tiniskia Division as DCM. It is installed inside the cab of the locomotive. It picks up the facial expression of the Driver.
BNE: How is Northeast Frontier Railway addressing the issue of railway network congestion, and what measures are being taken to reduce delays and improve operational efficiency?
GM: There are two three things only. Wherever there is single line, we are making it double line. Around 460 kilometer doubling work is done in last three or four years. Further, 560 km of new lines have come up in the recent years where there is no line.
BNE: Can you discuss the steps taken by Northeast Frontier Railway to improve the quality and range of services offered to customers, and how are you measuring customer satisfaction?
GM: The latest thing is ‘Rail Madad’. You can put up your complaint in the Rail Madad ( a mobile application). The Railway staff is monitoring it at 24 hour basis in all the divisions. Upon receiving the complaint it will alert the concerned person to take care of it. Statistics is being collected as how many complaints were received and at how much time it is being resolved.
BNE: What is the long-term vision and roadmap for Northeast Frontier Railway, and how are you ensuring that you are on track to achieve your goal?
GM: The Government has realised that it is not Look East but it is Act East. We are extensively trying to expand our network. NFR is connecting India with South East Asia. There is scope to expand international trade and resolve border conflicts.
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