Railways clears Rs 170 crore of Kavach 4.0 for the last 712 km in Moradabad

The Ministry of Railways approved on 1 September the fitment of Kavach Version 4.0 on the remaining 712 route kilometres of Northern Railway's Moradabad Division. The sanctioned cost is Rs 170 crore. The work is the last large Kavach gap on that division. It sits inside a wider 1 September packet of three projects worth Rs 675 crore, the other two being an 11 km Adra-Joychandipahar bypass in West Bengal at Rs 272 crore and a signalling upgrade in Samastipur Division, Bihar.

Kavach is India's own automatic train protection system. It is built to stop a train that passes a danger signal, to apply brakes when the driver does not, and to cap speed in sections where a collision would otherwise be a matter of seconds. Version 4.0 is the edition now being commissioned on the two busiest trunks. Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told the Lok Sabha that by 31 July 2026 the system was live on 2,633 route km: 1,423 km on the Delhi-Mumbai corridor and 1,210 km on Delhi-Howrah. Moradabad's remaining 712 km is a Northern Railway filler, not a glamorous trunk, which is why the modest rupee figure matters. Safety gear that only covers showcase routes leaves the rest of the timetable exposed.

The ministry's own accident series is the other number that belongs in the same paragraph. Train accidents fell 88 percent, from 135 in 2014-15 to 16 in 2025-26, with two recorded in the current year up to June. Those figures mix many causes: track work, better block working, fewer unmanned crossings, and, more recently, Kavach itself. They do not prove that 712 km in Moradabad will move the national series by itself. They do show why the Railway Board is willing to spend Rs 170 crore on a division that most passengers know only as a name on a reservation chart.

What Version 4.0 actually does

Automatic train protection is a conversation between the locomotive, the trackside, and the signalling. If the next signal is at danger and the driver keeps the handle open, the system should brake. If the permitted speed drops for a permanent or temporary restriction, the system should enforce the new cap. If two trains are closing on the same block, the system should not wait for a human to notice. Kavach is the Indian attempt to do that job without buying a foreign ATP lock, stock and radio.

The hard part is not the brochure. It is the last mile of fitment: locomotives that still lack the onboard unit, stations whose relays have not been mapped, and drivers who must trust a brake that can take the train away from them. Version 4.0 is supposed to be the edition that behaves consistently across the two trunks already commissioned. Extending it through Moradabad tests whether that consistency survives a mixed-traffic division with freight, mail and the odd high-speed rake sharing the same metals.

Rs 170 crore for 712 km works out to about Rs 24 lakh a kilometre on a simple division. That is not the full life-cycle cost. Onboard units, spares, training and the years of software patches will add to the bill. It is still cheap next to a single serious collision. The Balasore wreck of 2023 remains the political memory that every Kavach announcement is written against, even when the announcement does not name it.

How to read the 2,633 km figure

Two thousand six hundred and thirty-three commissioned kilometres sounds large until it is set against the size of the network. Indian Railways runs tens of thousands of route km. The Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah spines are the right place to start because that is where density and speed combine. Moradabad is the right next place because it feeds those spines. The risk is a map that looks complete on paper and still has quiet divisions running on older block instruments.

The 1 September clearance is a procurement decision, not a commissioning date. The useful follow-up is the day the first Moradabad section goes live with Version 4.0, and the first day a freight and a mail train share that section under the new brake. Until those two dates exist, Rs 170 crore is a line in a ministry note.