Indian Railways approves Kavach deployment worth Rs.270 crore on 631 route km of East Coast Railway

📌 Summary:

• Indian Railways approved deployment of Kavach on 631 Route Kilometres (RKm) of East Coast Railway at a cost of Rs.270 crore
• Covers six sections: Baghuapal-Budhapank, Haridaspur-Paradeep, Khurda Road-Balangir, Naupada-Gunupur, Lanjigarh Road-Junagarh and Bobbili-Salur
• Part of the larger national programme to deploy Kavach with an LTE-based communication backbone across the network
• Kavach is India's indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system that prevents Signal Passing at Danger (SPAD), over-speeding and train collisions by continuously monitoring movement and auto-applying brakes
• It enables safer running in adverse weather, including dense fog, improving punctuality and reliability
• Will benefit passenger and freight operations across key sections of Odisha and neighbouring regions

🎯 UPSC Relevance: GS3 (infrastructure, indigenous technology, railway safety) and S&T (Atmanirbhar Bharat in safety-critical systems). Illustrates technology-led safety reform in a large public transport network.

📝 Prelims Facts:

• Kavach is an indigenous Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system developed by RDSO with Indian firms
• It prevents SPAD (Signal Passing at Danger), over-speeding and collisions via automatic braking
• Kavach has been adopted as the national ATP system for Indian Railways

🔑 Key Term: Kavach — India's indigenous Automatic Train Protection system that automatically applies brakes to prevent collisions, over-speeding and signal passing at danger.