Millions of euro earmarked for rail safety in India diverted for luxury items including foot massagers

An Indian government audit which emerged days after a train crash that killed hundreds of people in the east of the country has found that millions of euro from a fund earmarked for rail safety were used to buy luxury items including foot massagers and expensive crockery.

On June 2nd, a crowded passenger train crashed into a stationary freight train at Balasore in Odisha, before derailing and hitting another packed commuter train travelling in the opposite direction. At least 275 people were killed and 1,000 injured.

India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found €45 million from the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK) or National Rail Safety Fund had been spent on items such as body and foot massagers, crockery and utensils, electrical appliances, air conditioners, winter jackets and furniture.

The CAG report said rail safety improvement funds had also been diverted to developing gardens, paying bonuses to railway staff and erecting the national flag at an unnamed railway location at a cost of more than €70,000.

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Prime minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government lays special emphasis on installing India’s tricolour flag on tall poles to instil a sense of patriotism among citizens. As a result, government departments across India compete with each other to install bigger and taller flags on their premises.

The CAG report said a random audit scrutiny of the RRSK exposed “incorrect bookings of expenditure” of €112.8 million in 2020, three years after the fund’s inception in 2017.

According to the CAG, this was against the guiding principles of the RRSK’s “fund deployment framework” in which the allocation for rail track upgrades and improved safety measures were a priority to accommodate newer and faster trains.

Senior Indian Railways officials, however, denied any misuse of safety funds under RRSK. They maintained that they had merely used some resources to provide facilities and amenities such as body and foot massagers in rooms used by locomotive crews in between operating trains, to enable them to get “proper rest”.

[ India train crash: Signalling error blamed ]

In a statement, Indian Railways claimed that rest periods for rail operating staff were “critical”, as several investigations into past derailments and crashes had identified “human error due to fatigued locomotive staff” as a cause. The organisation said €209 million had been provided in the RRSK outlay for human resource development to improve staff working conditions.

Meanwhile, the twin inquiries into the Odisha crash by the Indian Railways safety committee and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) were continuing.

Preliminary reports had indicated that the crash could have been caused by a signal failure, but the authorities, suspecting that human interference with the electronic interlocking system on the rail track may have been responsible, led to the involvement of law enforcement officials in the CBI.

Opposition parties, however, described the CBI’s participation as a ploy to “whitewash” the national railway’s incompetence in following safety measures.