Kalka-Chandigarh-Sahnewal rail route to get Kavach safety system; Rs 201-crore project approved for Ambala division

Train travel on the Kalka-Chandigarh-New Morinda-Sahnewal route, one of the busiest rail corridors serving the city and the region, is set to become significantly safer with the Centre approving a Rs 201-crore project to install the indigenous Kavach Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system across the Ambala division of Northern Railway.

The Ministry of Railways today announced that the Indian Railways has sanctioned the installation of Kavach on the balance Broad Gauge sections of the Ambala division, covering 811 route kilometres at a cost of Rs 201 crore. The project has been cleared under the umbrella programme for provision of Kavach with an LTE-based communication backbone on the remaining routes of Indian Railways.

Besides the Kalka-Chandigarh-New Morinda-Sahnewal section, the sanctioned work will cover the Ambala Cantonment-Ludhiana, Sirhind-Daulatpur Chowk, Rajpura-Bathinda-Shri Ganganagar and Ludhiana-Dhuri-Jakhal sections — key corridors connecting Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh that handle heavy passenger and freight traffic.

Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the decision reflected the government’s commitment to making rail travel safer for the common man. “Kavach is a major leap in railway safety technology developed entirely in India, and extending it to the Ambala division will directly benefit lakhs of passengers travelling on the Chandigarh, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh routes every day,” he said.

Minister of State for Railways Ravneet Singh Bittu, who represents Punjab, termed the approval a significant gain for the region. “This project will bring one of the most modern train protection systems to routes that connect Chandigarh, Mohali and other parts of Punjab with the rest of the country. It is a strong step towards eliminating accidents caused by human error on our railway network,” he told The Tribune.

Kavach is designed to prevent Signal Passing at Danger (SPAD), automatically apply brakes to avert unsafe situations, control train speed in critical stretches, and reduce the risk of head-on and rear-end collisions. Railway officials said the system is being progressively rolled out across high-density and strategically important routes nationwide as part of efforts to improve safety, reliability and capacity.