New Delhi, July 30: Indian Railways has commissioned the hi-tech indigenous railway safety system Kavach 4.0 on the Mathura-Kota section of the high-density Delhi-Mumbai corridor. The safety system is designed to prevent accidents by monitoring and controlling train speeds, Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw announced on Wednesday.

The minister said Indian Railways is gearing up to commission Kavach 4.0 on various routes throughout the country within a short span of 6 years. Over 30,000 people have already been trained on Kavach systems.

IRISET (Indian Railway Institute of Signal Engineering and Telecommunications) has signed MOU with 17 AICTE approved Engineering colleges, institutions, universities for incorporating Kavach as part of their B.Tech course curriculum.

Kavach will help the loco pilots in maintaining train speed by effective brake application. Even in low visibility conditions like fog, the loco pilots will not have to look outside from the cabin for a signal. Pilots can see the information on the dashboard installed inside the cab.

Kavach is designed at Safety Integrity Level 4 (SIL 4) which is the highest level of safety design.

The system was extensively tested for over 3 years and based on the experience gained in South Central Railway, an advanced version ‘Kavach 4.0’ was developed which was approved in May 2025 for speeds up to 160 kmph.

Kavach is an extremely complex system. Commissioning of Kavach is equivalent to setting up a telecom company. It includes RFID tags: installed at every 1 km along the entire length of the track. Tags are also installed at every signal. These RFID tags provide precise location of the trains.

Full-fledged telecom towers including optical fiber connectivity and power supply are installed across the track length every few kilometres. Kavach systems installed on locos and Kavach controllers at the stations are constantly communicating using these towers.

The loco Kavach interacts with the RFID tags installed on the tracks and relays the information to telecom towers and receives radio information from Station Kavach. Loco Kavach is also integrated with the braking system of the locomotives. This system ensures that brakes are applied in case of an emergency situation.

These systems need to be installed, checked, and certified without disrupting the railway operations including heavy movement of passenger and goods trains.

Indian Railways invests more than Rs 1 lakh crore per year on safety related activities. Kavach is one of the many initiatives taken to enhance safety of passengers and trains, the minister added. (IANS)

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