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Minister puts train mishap toll at 49

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

Minister of State for Railways O Rajagopal on Monday said that the death toll in the recent rail accident was only 49, and not 57 as claimed by several dailies.

He also rejected the demand for a judicial probe into the mishap by opposition leader in the Kerala assembly V S Achutanandan saying that they are time consuming. "Till date, we have not received the probe report for the train accident at Khanna in Punjab," he pointed out.

The minister said the Kadalundi bridge was inspected by a division engineer of the Southern Railways on June 19 and was found fit.

"Two trains - Mangala Express and Madras-Mangalore Mail - had crossed the same bridge only hours before the accident took place," he said. However, he conceded that the bridge needed immediate attention.

"A new bridge was under construction and 75 per cent of the work has been completed," he said adding that the railways were to take up the work of strengthening the bridge as soon as the work on the new bridge got over.

The minister said that it would take a couple of weeks for traffic to be restored and till then trains were being diverted through other routes.

According to statistics made available by the Railway Board, there are over 120,000 railway bridges in the country and over 51,000 were more than 100 years old.

The Justice H R Khanna committee had recommended immediate replacement of the old bridges.

"Each track force should be equipped with state-of-art testing equipment," Justice Khanna wrote in his report, which was submitted to the railway ministry in 1999.

"We are in touch with the ministry of finance on this issue. The replacement of the old bridges and other assets needs a huge investment to the tune of Rs 15,000 crore (Rs 150 billion)," Railway Board Chairman Ashok Kumar said.

The Complete Coverage: The Kerala train mishap

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