Over 50 per cent mail, express trains ran late: CAG

Shubhadeep Choudhury
New Delhi, April 7

Expressing concern about the late running of trains, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India’s compliance audit report of the railways for the year ending on March 2020, tabled in the Rajya Sabha , said that over fifty per cent of the Mail/Express trains ran late during the period under its review.

Audit analysed the data for Mail/Express trains for 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19 from ICMS report and noticed that out of 13,15,456 trains reported per annum, 3,89,877 (29.64 per cent) trains reached on time (RT) and 2,65,391 (20.17 per cent) trains arrived before time (BT). Remaining 6,60,188 (50.19 per cent) trains were delayed. “Before time” cases indicate poor timetabling by provision of extra running time, the report stated.

The audit found that in 2015-16, out of 5.86 lakh trains, 1.27 lakh Express trains reached the destination stations late. During 2018-19, number of delayed trains increased by 43 per cent. Out of 6.22 lakh trains, 1.82 lakh trains did not meet the punctuality yardstick which included a 15 minutes concession regarding reaching destination.

Three zonal railways: North Central Railways, East Central Railways and Northern Railways – contributed 69 and 67 per cent in total delay during 2015-16 and 2018-19.

During the period 2015-16, 2016-17 and 2017-18 the number of complaints that were lodged for late running of trains was 91,12,20,025 and 35,793 respectively. The complaints increased to 40,077 (an increase of 340 per cent over the year 2015-16) in 2018-19.

The report mentioned 33 factors that generally led to delay in train operations.

Six out of the 33 factors were responsible for 66 per cent of the cases of delays, the report said.

The six factors were listed as, “out of path”, “engineering”, “re- scheduling of trains by various zonal railways (ZR)”, “delay from other railways”, “planned block open line” and “traffic”. All six factors are internal and amenable to control, the report stated.

According to the report, Integrated Coaching Management System (ICMS) captures all the incidents that cause train operations’ delay and these incidents have been classified under 33 factors.

During 2017-18 and 2018-19, 1,62,581 and 1,78,980 train services, respectively, were delayed on account of these 33 factors. These factors contributed to a total detention of 6.65 crore minutes to Mail/Express trains for the two years.

Twenty-seven out of 33 factors of punctuality loss are internal factors controlled by Railways and the remaining six factors are external factors. The total contribution of external factors for delay during the two-year period (2017-19) was 12.89 per cent.