New Delhi railway station a disaster-in-waiting? Faulty safety arrangements say so

The New Delhi railway station is a disaster in waiting, thanks to the faulty safety arrangements on its premises.

As many as 56 of the 64 fire extinguishers installed at the station are empty or defective, 10 of the 152 CCTV cameras have conked off while several others have been rendered useless because of poor visibility or strange angles.

Baggage scanners are ineffective in detecting ammunition on their own and four of the 12 scanners have been "out of service" for some time now.

These shortcomings in the safety measures at the station have been detected in an audit carried out by the fire safety audit team of northern railway. The safety audit was conducted on January 8 and the report was submitted to the Railway Board on January 23.

The railway station, which receives about 5 lakh people every day, has been marked as "sensitive" by security agencies. Still, the audit team found 56 of the 64 fire extinguishers in non-usable condition. While 35 extinguishers were empty, 11 were due for refilling and 10 were defective.

A number of CCTV cameras, installed to secure the 1.9 lakh sq mt premises of New Delhi railway station, were found to be angling towards the roof or the floor below, covering vacant spaces instead of the passengers and the entry, exit points.

The Hong Kong-made high-tech cameras, bought for over Rs 1.6 crore, were claimed to have an 'analytical capability' to not only give security officers a complete view of the railway station but also send signals about suspicious movements or unclaimed baggage.

Big compromise

Officials now say that the problems found with the CCTVs are mainly due to the movement of birds inside the railway station.

"We have been trying to keep the birds off the premises but if one of them builds a nest or as much as flicks the camera, the whole angle is disturbed. We keep a tab on all our cameras and keep rectifying the viewing angle if it is found to be faulty. Also, the cameras that are found to be not working up to the standards are brought to the notice of the maintenance agency," said Anurag Sachan, divisional railway manager, Delhi.

The other big compromise in the security cover is the inadequate baggage scanning facility at the station. According to the audit team "none of the scanners are technically equipped to detect weapons and explosives on their own".

A senior member of the audit team said detection of any hazardous item such as firearms, bombs can be done only on the basis of the shape of the article on the monitoring screen.

Hence, the actual responsibility of detection lies with the staff manning the scanners. The audit team also found four of the 12 scanners installed at the station to be "out of service" and detection of parcels at the railway station not being done properly.

The DRM of northern railway's Delhi division said the four scanners were only put aside to lessen the inconvenience of the commuters. "Since winter sees a thinner crowd than summer, we have put aside the four scanners. They are working fine and if need be, we can bring them into service," said Sachan.

Around 15,000 parcels are received at the New Delhi railway station daily and officials admit that a mechanism of scanning all of them has still not been devised.

"Non-technical aids such as X-ray for explosive detection are used to check the contents. All the lease and railway-booked parcels are only weighed and the declaration in the manifesto by the booking party is taken for granted," the audit report said.

"We have taken into account all the anomalies pointed out by the audit team. All necessary measures will be taken to see that our stations are in perfect working order and quite secure from all threats," said Sachan.