₹736 Crore, Four Railway Approvals and One Long-Overdue Safety System

Indian Railways cleared four works worth ₹736 crore on 19 September, led by Kavach on 607.7 km in Lucknow Division. Here is the cost breakdown, and why Kavach took so long.

On **19 September 2026**, the Ministry of Railways approved four works in a single day. Added together, they come to **₹736.23 crore**. It is the kind of announcement that is easy to skim past as routine. Laid out properly, the numbers say more than the press statement did.

Only one of the four is about Kavach, India's home-grown train protection system. The other three are signalling, power and road-safety works, spread across four zones and four states. Each deserves a separate look.

**Kavach 4.0: ₹252 crore, 607.7 route km, Lucknow Division, North Eastern Railway.** This is the largest item. It extends Kavach version 4.0 to what the ministry called the "identified balance sections" of the division, meaning stretches not already covered by earlier Kavach work there. The cost works out to **about ₹41.47 lakh per route kilometre**.

**Electronic interlocking: ₹209 crore, seven stations, Solapur Division, Central Railway.** The stations are Mohol, Mundhewadi, Bale, Solapur, Hotgi, Shahabad and Wadi. Interlocking is the safety logic that stops signals and points (the movable track switches) from being set in a way that sends two trains onto a collision course. Electronic systems replace older relay-based ones, detect faults faster and connect directly to Kavach. The ministry said this work will support Kavach, automatic block signalling and centralised traffic control on this high-density route. That is roughly **₹30 crore per station**.

**Traction upgrade: ₹142 crore, 73 route km, Savalyapuram–Guntur section, South Coast Railway.** This is not new electrification; the line already runs electric trains. The work upgrades its power supply from a 1x25 kV to a **2x25 kV** system, a design that delivers more power over longer distances so the line can carry more and heavier trains. It covers 146 track km on the Vasco–Guntakal–Guntur–Vijayawada corridor in Andhra Pradesh, at about ₹1.95 crore per route km.

**Road over bridge: ₹133.23 crore, Level Crossing No. 53, Udhna–Ukai Songadh section, Western Railway.** A four-lane bridge will replace a level crossing, where road traffic meets the railway at ground level, in Gujarat. The cost is split equally between the Railways and the Gujarat government, about ₹66.6 crore each. The rail bridge portion alone, an open-web steel girder, is estimated at ₹91.60 crore.

One detail changes the headline. Because Gujarat pays half the bridge, the Railways' own share of the day's approvals is about **₹670 crore**, not ₹736 crore.

Kavach, meaning "armour", is an Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system. Equipment at stations, along the track and inside the locomotive constantly exchanges data: signal status, speed limits and the train's exact position, read from radio-frequency tags fixed to the track. If the loco pilot fails to slow for a speed limit or is about to pass a red signal, Kavach first warns and then applies the brakes itself. It also displays signal information inside the cab, which helps in fog, and can stop trains when it detects two on a collision path.

The main danger it targets is a **signal passed at danger (SPAD)**, when a train runs a red signal. In its inquiry into the 2024 Kanchanjunga Express crash, the Commissioner of Railway Safety noted **208 SPAD cases between April 2019 and March 2024, of which 12 led to collisions**, and urged that Kavach be installed on priority.

Kavach does not prevent every accident. It cannot fix a broken rail, a faulty coach or a wrongly wired signal. But it closes one of the most dangerous gaps on any railway: a human error at a red signal.

Big totals are hard to compare. A per-kilometre figure makes them checkable.

The ministry has told Parliament several times that Kavach costs about **₹50 lakh per route km** for track-side and station equipment, and about **₹80 lakh per locomotive**. The Lucknow approval, at ₹41.47 lakh per km, comes in below that benchmark.

There may be good reasons. Some sections may already have optical fibre or telecom towers in place, or fewer stations per kilometre. It is also not clear from the announcement whether any locomotive equipment is included. Either way, the figure gives a baseline. If future approvals come in sharply higher or lower without an obvious reason, such as difficult terrain, dense station yards or new towers, that is worth asking about.

Kavach did not appear overnight. Work began around 2011–12 as the Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), developed by the Railways' Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) with Indian companies. The first trials on passenger trains took place in **February 2016**. Three suppliers were approved in 2018–19, the system received the highest international safety rating (SIL-4), and it was adopted as the **national ATP system in July 2020**.

Then the rollout crawled. The ministry's own figures show Kavach was deployed on 250 route km in 2018–19, 15 km in 2019–20, 321 km in 2020–21 and 859 km in 2021–22. In the Union Budget of February 2022, the finance minister promised that **2,000 km would come under Kavach in 2022–23**. The actual figure for that year was **20 km**.

The Railways' explanation is that it paused to improve the design. Lessons from version 3.2, deployed on 1,465 route km in South Central Railway, fed into version 4.0, whose specification RDSO approved only on **16 July 2024**. Version 4.0 improves location accuracy, handles large station yards better, links stations over optical fibre and connects directly with electronic interlocking.

Meanwhile, the accidents kept coming. In **October 2023**, two passenger trains collided near Vizianagaram in Andhra Pradesh, killing 17; the safety inquiry blamed the crew for overshooting a red signal and recommended fitting Kavach's anti-collision features on every locomotive, even outside Kavach territory. In **June 2024**, a goods train rammed the Kanchanjunga Express near New Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, killing 10, on a stretch where automatic signals had failed and Kavach had not been installed. The Railways has maintained that the 2023 Balasore crash in Odisha, which killed nearly 300 people, stemmed from signalling faults and tampering that Kavach would not have prevented.

The current plan took shape in 2024. After version 4.0 was cleared, the Railways laid out a phased programme covering about 66,000 route km of key and high-density routes. Bids for the first phase, about 14,735 route km, were invited that year, with around 17,000 route km planned for 2025–26 and roughly 30,000 more over the following two years. At least 10,000 locomotives, including all new Vande Bharat trains, were to come with Kavach fitted.

Vaishnaw has framed this pace as fast by global standards. In February 2025, he said Kavach would cover the entire network within six years, and noted that most developed countries took around 20 years to equip their networks with train protection.

Sanctions have kept coming at the zone and division level. In August 2026, the ministry told Parliament that Kavach had been sanctioned for another 2,147 route km in South Western Railway and about 650 route km on the Chennai Beach–Tirunelveli line. The Lucknow Division approval fits this pattern: a division-level sanction to fill remaining gaps, not a new trunk corridor.

The distinction matters because sanctions and commissioning are different stages. A sanction releases money and allows tenders. Commissioning, after track-side installation, locomotive fitting and trials, is when trains are actually protected. The gap between the two is where most of the delay has sat.

To be fair, the Railways' overall safety record has improved sharply. Consequential train accidents, those with serious loss of life, injury or property, fell from **135 in 2014–15 to 16 in 2025–26**, with two recorded between April and June 2026. Spending on safety-related work has risen from ₹39,200 crore in 2013–14 to a budgeted ₹1,20,389 crore in 2026–27.

Other layers of protection have spread too. Electrical or electronic interlocking now covers 6,671 stations, and the fully electronic kind, the type approved for Solapur, has grown from 837 stations in March 2014 to 3,691 in March 2026. All unmanned level crossings on broad-gauge lines were eliminated by January 2019. Between 2014 and May 2026, 14,451 road over- and under-bridges were built, against 4,148 in the previous decade, and another 4,993 are sanctioned at about ₹1.17 lakh crore. The Gujarat bridge approved this month joins that queue.

That context matters. Kavach is the last line of defence, not the only one.

As of **31 July 2026**, Kavach 4.0 had been commissioned on **2,633 route km**, on the Delhi–Mumbai (1,423 km) and Delhi–Howrah (1,210 km) trunk routes. Add the older version 3.2 in South Central Railway and total coverage is a little over 4,000 route km.

India's network is about **69,400 route km**. That puts Kavach coverage at roughly **6%** of the network, on a system that carried a record 741 crore passenger journeys in 2025–26, about two crore a day.

Work under way is much wider than coverage. Track-side work has been taken up on **21,794 route km**, and track-side equipment is installed on 7,726 km. Kavach has been fitted on 6,153 locomotives, with work under way on 7,435 more and 1,200 suburban train sets. More than 94,000 staff, including about 57,000 loco pilots and assistants, have been trained. Spending on Kavach up to June 2026 was about **₹3,875 crore**, and this year's allocation is ₹2,066 crore.

The target, set by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in September 2024, is Kavach across the network and on all locomotives by **December 2030**. Covering the remaining 65,000-odd route km in about 52 months would need roughly **1,250 km commissioned every month**. In July 2026, commissioned length grew by 143 km in 18 days, a pace of about 240 km a month.

The pace will likely pick up as the 21,794 km of track-side work matures. But on current numbers, the gap between the target and the trend is wide.

**Does Kavach replace the loco pilot?**

No. The pilot still drives the train. Kavach steps in only when the pilot fails to respond to a signal or a speed limit.

**Why does Kavach need equipment on both the track and the train?**

It works only when both sides talk to each other. A Kavach-fitted train on an unfitted line, or an unfitted train on a fitted line, gets no protection. That is why locomotive fitting matters as much as route kilometres.

**Why not import a proven foreign system?**

The ministry argues that imported systems cost far more per kilometre and that India wanted an open design several domestic suppliers could build and maintain. It describes Kavach as one of the cheapest ATP systems in the world.

**Would Kavach have prevented every recent crash?**

No. Safety investigators linked the Vizianagaram and Kanchanjunga collisions to failures that Kavach is designed to catch. Derailments from track or coach defects, and faults inside the signalling system itself, need other fixes.

**Coverage percentage.** Route km commissioned against the roughly 69,400 km network, updated with every parliamentary reply, rather than treating each approval on its own.

**Monthly pace.** Whether commissioning rises from a few hundred km a month towards the roughly 1,250 km needed for December 2030. If it does not, a revised deadline should be stated openly.

**Locomotives.** How many locomotives and train sets carry Kavach. Line coverage is of little use without fitted trains.

**Cost benchmarks.** Whether new approvals stay near the ₹41–50 lakh per km range, and what the Lucknow project finally costs on completion.

**Performance data.** SPADs and near-misses on Kavach-covered sections compared with uncovered ones. The Railways does not yet publish such data regularly.

**Delivery dates.** When the Lucknow Division Kavach work, the Solapur interlocking and the Guntur traction upgrade are commissioned, and whether the Gujarat bridge is finished within its shared budget.

₹736 crore in one day's approvals sounds impressive. Broken into parts, it is more precise: ₹252 crore for Kavach at a checkable ₹41.47 lakh per km, two signalling and power upgrades that support safer, busier lines, and a level-crossing bridge half-funded by Gujarat. Kavach coverage is growing, but at about 6% of the network, a decade after passenger trials began, it remains far short of the promise. The figure to watch is the monthly pace of commissioning, not the size of any single approval.

**Note on perspective**: {{Based on Ministry of Railways statements, parliamentary replies and Commissioner of Railway Safety inquiry findings as of 25 September 2026. The analysis weighs real safety gains against a rollout that has repeatedly missed its own targets.}}