The railway ministry can now move a resolution in both Houses of Parliament adopting the Railway Convention Committee’s recommendations for a waiver on dividend for 2016-17. Cabinet approves Resolution for adoption of the recommendations of the Railway Convention Committee (2014) as contained in their Sixth Report on “Rate of Dividend payable by the Railways to the General Revenues for the year 2016-17 and other ancillary matters”

The Union Cabinet on Thursday cleared a proposal for a one-time waiver of Indian railways’ dividend payout of around Rs 9,000 crore to the general exchequer for 2016-17, purely as a one-time move, the Rate of Dividend payable by Railways to the General Revenues be waived off. With this, railways can now approach the Parliament for its approval to the waiver.

After the merger of the railway budget with general budget last year, it was decided that the national transporter would not have to pay dividend for the capital invested in it. While railways was budgeted to pay Rs 9,730 crore as dividend for last financial year, a subsidy of Rs 4,300 crore was claimed by it towards loss-making routes, putting the net dividend reportedly at about Rs 5,430 crore.

“Cabinet approves the proposal of the ministry of railways to move a resolution in both the houses of Parliament adopting Railway Convention Committee’s (2014) recommendations that for the year 2016-17, purely as a one-time move, the rate of dividend payable by the railways to the general revenues be waived off,” said the Press Information Bureau (PIB) on its Twitter handle.

Artesyn Embedded Technologies, a global leader in highly reliable and available embedded computer systems, today announced a collaboration with Lab To Market Innovations Pvt Ltd, an Innovations development company incubated at the prestigious Indian Institute of Science, to bring the ControlSafe™ portfolio of rail computing platforms to the Indian railways market.

Artesyn’s ControlSafe portfolio includes the ControlSafe Platform, ControlSafe Expansion Box Platform, ControlSafe Carborne Platform and the ControlSafe Compact Carborne Platform. They are designed to enable rail system integrators to accelerate time-to-market and reduce the cost and risk of developing or upgrading train control and rail signaling applications. By leveraging a SIL4 COTS fail-safe and fault-tolerant computing platform, railway technology companies can focus on their value-added offering and final certification for end solutions.

“The ControlSafe portfolio is designed for a wide range of onboard and wayside applications and is already saving integrators years of time-to-market and millions in development costs all over the world,” said Qianqian Shao, product manager, Artesyn Embedded Technologies. “We have selected Lab To Market for its entrepreneurship and experience in the Indian market and this alliance will enable us to jointly tailor solutions for the next generation of India’s train control systems and signaling applications.”

“India has a world-renowned rail infrastructure carrying over 20 million passengers a day and a growing need for investment into dedicated freight networks,” said professor S.K. Sinha, founder and managing director of Lab to Market. “We have assembled a team of some of the best experts in transportation, electronics, embedded systems and business development, backed by the number one university in India for technology and research. Using the ControlSafe platform, with SIL4 certifications, will help us bring this much-needed infrastructure to reality more quickly, cost effectively and with a reliable development roadmap.”

The first three platforms in Artesyn’s ControlSafe portfolio have been certified to SIL4, while certification is planned for the latest platform to be announced, the ControlSafe Compact Carborne Platform.

About Lab To Market

Lab to Market’s main business is to develop and license products/solutions to industries with the active involvement of academia. Lab to Market is incubated at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and works closely with the faculty of this most prestigious institution, known world over for its world class facilities and research output. Our mission is to develop market-ready and commercially-viable products and solutions from the ‘proof of concept’ and ‘laboratory prototypes’ of academic institutions, research laboratories and similar others.

About Artesyn Embedded Technologies

Artesyn Embedded Technologies is a global leader in the design and manufacture of highly reliable power conversion and embedded computing solutions for a wide range of industries including communications, computing, consumer electronics, medical, military, aerospace and industrial automation. For more than 40 years, customers have trusted Artesyn to help them accelerate time-to-market and reduce risk with cost-effective advanced network computing and power conversion solutions. Headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, Artesyn has over 16,000 employees worldwide across ten engineering centers of excellence, four wholly-owned world-class manufacturing facilities, and global sales and support offices.

BHUBANESWAR: Diversion of coal rakes entitled for NTPC’s Simhadari plant from Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd (MCL), a subsidiary of Coal India Ltd (MCL) by NTPC management triggered shutdown of its 500 MW unit in Andhra Pradesh, an MCL release said.

NTPC management had continuously diverted coal rakes from MCL entitled for Simhadari STPS (super thermal power station) to the Korba STPS and Seepat TPS (thermal power station) which were running super-critical.

MCL has been regularly offering coal as per programme of NTPC Simhadari to South East Central Railway as well as East Coast Railways.

As on date, materialisation of Andhra Pradesh-based thermal power station has been 95 per cent of pro rata ACQ (Annual Contracted Quality) for the month and 79 per cent for annual pro rata ACQ.

Between November 11 and 14, 2017, MCL has dispatched an average of seven rakes to NTPC Simhadari (seven, six, nine and six rakes respectively), which has been more than the supply of 5.5 rakes per day to the plant, as per the decision of the sub-group of the Ministry of Coal.

MCL is committed to maintain continuous supply of coal to its consumers and with the cooperation of Railways, the company has been successful in checking the growing demand-supply gap in the country. On Tuesday, 73 rakes were provided by Railways to MCL for coal supply.

In the current quarter Q3, the supply of coal from MCL has crossed an average of 400,000 tonnes per day.

MCL has supplied about 82 million tonnes of coal to its consumers in the current fiscal and has sufficient stock to feed all power consumers, including NTPC Simhadri.

The company had crossed 141 million tonne supply of coal to consumers during 2016-17, which had been the highest supply ever by any coal company in the country.

NEW DELHI: With nearly 500 projects worth Rs 4 lakh crore delayed, the railways has decided that no new project will be taken up from now on until states give written commitments regarding transfer of land. Delay in land acquisition is one of the major causes for new rail projects not taking off.

The decision was taken by Railway Board Chairman Ashwani Lohani following internal deliberations. The board has issued policy guidelines to all zonal headquarters authorising general managers (GMs) to invite tenders only if they are reasonably certain of the possibility of land acquisition within a reasonable time-frame.

“In suppression of all earlier instructions, Railway Board has decided that issue of tenders or commencement of physical work for New Line projects shall be taken up only after completion of land acquisition subject,” said the policy document issued on October 30.

The document says that GMs can also consider seeking a written assurance from the state governments in this regard. The idea is to put the onus on state governments for smooth transfer of land for railway projects.

“The problem of land acquisition comes in new line projects, majority of which are recommended by states. So, the new guidelines put the onus on states to provide the land if they want new projects to be sanctioned,” said a senior railway board officer.

According to official statistics, there are about 491 projects – new lines, gauge conversion and doubling — pending completion. Of these, 171 are new railway line projects worth Rs 2 lakh crore.

“For the purpose of execution, large projects can be divided into phases by GMs… after ensuring that each phase, on completion, yields commercial return for Railways,” the policy document added.

It has been decided that the policy will be followed not just in cases of new projects but also old ones where tenders have not yet been finalised. Under the earlier policy, tenders could be issued if 70 per cent of land was available for the projects. But according to railway sources, it was hardly followed.

The guidelines have been sent to all states so that they can initiate the procedures for facilitating land acquisition for railway projects.

With growing cases of derailment in the past few months, the South Eastern Railway (SER), in a move to increase capacity and ensure the safer running of trains, has replaced the route relay interlocking (RRI) system at Kharagpur with Asia’s largest solid state interlocking (SSI) system. This technology that is set to come into effect from Sunday will allow station masters at Kharagpur to set 800 different routes for trains in a matter of a few clicks.

This is in stark contrast to the vintage RRI system which only allowed operators to set a mere 423 routes.

Principal Chief Operations Manager of SER, Suchitto Kumar Das said, “This will be Asia’s largest SSI system. The RRI system is of pre-1980 vintage and has crossed its codal-life.”

The cost of installing the new system is a whopping Rs 39 crore. This new technology will allow the path of a train to be set in a way that it has to cross several tracks.

The prime benefit of the interlocking system is that it ensures no cross movement takes place during the crossings, to avoid disastrous collisions.

“The SSI system is much more dependable than the older ones. We have been carrying out tests on this system for the last 7-8 months,” said Das.

The project that was kick-started at the Kharagpur yard on November 4 will continue its work, till Sunday. It is likely, that passengers may face severe disruptions in the suburban rail services from Friday, once the SER begins to switch over to the SSI system from its current RRI system.

During the work, the SER will make platform numbers 7 and 8 at Kharagpur operational. To increase capacity, it will also link a third line from Howrah and a second line from Midnapore to the Kharagpur yard by Sunday.

As per SER’s Chief passenger transportation manager, Soumitra Majumdar, over 116 pairs of trains originate, terminate or pass through Kharagpur every day.

With the dawn of the new technology in place, three signal cabins will become inessential, and the requirement for cabin masters will decrease.

“We’ll require more station masters to operate the system. Some trains may be delayed, but we don’t anticipate any major trouble after Sunday,” he told.

The Railway Board has recently approved the provision of installing free Wi-Fi hotspots at 200 rural and remote stations across the country through Universal Services Obligation Fund (USOF) of the Centre. RailTel, a company under the ministry of railways, will carry out the project. USOF, which comes under department of telecommunications, has an objective to provide widespread and non-discriminatory access to quality ICT (information and communications technology) services to people in rural and remote areas.

Stations like Malatipatpur, Sakhigopal, Birapurusottampur, Delang, Motori, Retang, Mancheswar, Barang, Gopalpur, Balikuda and other small stations under the jurisdiction of the East Coast Railway (ECoR) will be provided with free Wi-Fi service through the USOF project.

These stations will get high speed internet facility like Bhubaneswar, Puri and Visakhapatnam. Passengers passing the stations and local people can enjoy the free Wi-Fi facility at these stations. Target for completion of the project is March 2018.

Umesh Singh, ECoR General Manager, has reviewed the progress of Wi-Fi services in different stations and asked all concerned officials to expedite the new work.

The zone has already installed Wi-Fi services at small stations like Keonjhargarh, Paradeep, Tikiri and Bissamcuttack with the help of local industries, corporate houses and social organisations. The zone had decided on its own to request some corporate houses to invest their CSR fund to provide the service at some rural stations. This fund will boost their plan, said a senior railway officer.

Besides this, the ECoR has already installed Wi-Fi hotspots at all A1 category stations like Bhubaneswar and A category stations like Cuttack of the ECoR.

A 38-year-old woman who works as a labourer was allegedly raped by five men near a railway station in Madhya Pradesh for nearly seven hours, police said on Tuesday.

The incident took place on November 18, but was only reported on Monday evening, a senior police officer from the Habibganj railway police station BL Sen told news agency Press Trust of India. The woman alleged that she had earlier gone to Obaidullagunj police station, but was asked to go to Habibganj.

Mr Sen said the woman was waiting for a train at Obaidullaganj station to go to Budhni, where she worked, when she met with an acquaintance who offered to arrange someone to drop her on a motorcycle. She agreed to go with him, police said.

However, instead of taking her to her village, the accused allegedly took her to a deserted place and raped her. The man then called four of his friends who allegedly took her to a railway under-bridge near Obaidullaganj station and raped her again, Mr Sen said.

The woman managed to reach home on Sunday morning and filed a complaint with Habibganj police station on Monday, Mr Sen said. “We will soon arrest the accused,” he said, adding the accused have been booked for gang-rape. The medical report of the woman is yet to come.

The police station in-charge at Obaidullaganj denied the accusation and said she had not turned up at the police station or spoken to anyone outside.

“This police station is located by a national highway. I am not aware if any outside person or the policeman of any other station asked her to go to GRP Habibganj police station,” the police station in-charge added.

On October 31, a 19-year-old student was raped for three hours in Bhopal. The police had made her wait for hours before taking her complaint, which led to the suspension of six officers.

In another incident, a 10-year-old was gang-raped by a 65-year-old and watchman and two others in Bhopal over three months.