Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw has informed that work on the Automatic Train Protection system KAVACH in the country is progressing at a fast pace. Replying to supplementaries in the Lok Sabha today, Mr Vaishnaw said KAVACH is a very complex system with five sub-systems. He said, Optical Fibre Cables, OFC have been installed in eight thousand 570 kilometres. The Minister said, over 1100 Telecom Towers has been put in place and 767 station data centres have been established in stations. He said, Track Side Equipment have been installed in six thousand 776 kilometres. Mr Vaishnaw said, the work on the KAVACH system should have started in the 90’s but it was started after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took charge in 2014.

Replying to another supplementary, the Minister said, Railways has taken several steps to protect wildlife, like creating underpasses and overpasses. He said, the Ministry of Railways is using technologies like Optical Fibre Cables and AI Cameras to protect wildlife, including elephants. In his reply to a question on Konkan Railways, Mr Vaishnaw said, Detailed Project Report work is underway to increase capacity. He said, Konkan Rail is an important line, and efforts are on to strengthen the tunnels and tracks. He added that four states Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala, are stakeholders in it and sought more cooperation from Karnataka and Kerala State governments.