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Politics makes Delhi-Howrah route corridor of death

NEW DELHI: Sundays rail accident that killed at least 68 and injured 181 occurred on the Delhi-Howrah route — one of the busiest routes — thanks to successive ministers from the eastern part of the country. The ministers — be it Ram Vilas Paswan, Lalu Prasad or Mamata Banerjee — pushed railway mandarins to run new trains at higher speed catering to their constituency despite the route being saturated. In this route, where more than 70% of the sections are critical, 17 sections of this route are more than 120% utilized, 12 sections are more than 100% utilized and 11 are more than 80% utilized, according to calculations of 2007-08. The route, a part of golden quadrilateral, was put under more strain after Banerjee took charge and went on to announce a slew of Kolkata-bound trains in quick succession. With technological advances, though railways manages to run more trains on this route, the situation turns worse during winter heightened by intense fog. To make matters worse, the pressure on tracks have increased over the years due to increasing loading capacity per wagon, despite warning from several committees and experts that overloading has been damaging tracks, and consequently putting human lives at risk.

                                                                                                               
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