Among the leaders of the ruling establishments both at the Centre and in Punjab, only Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has shown a certain level of wisdom by stating that the 'tragedy could have been avoided'. Many others, including minister of state for railways Manoj Sinha gave irresponsible statements, such as ‘railways not at fault’, ‘the state administration not at fault’, ‘people on track were trespassers’, the ‘organisers of the Dussehra celebrations had not taken permission from various wings of the state administration’ etc.

Sinha’s statement was outrageous in that it was issued even before a probe of this shocking and terrible incident was undertaken to examine issues pertaining to the operation of the railways and its administration. For example, the railways were still probing the three main issues: Was any intimation given regarding the event being held so close to the track? How was the event allowed to happen so close to the railway track? And, was there a technical failure, such as in signalling or error on the part of railways team? There are many other issues that involve his ministry’s and railways’ operation, which are presently ignored, but need to be addressed, such as the place of occurrence is near Joda phatak (railway crossing) in a busy market place having people assembled in large number, many of them were on the railway track. Why the driver of the train was not given the signal to either slow down the train or stop it? What did the driver of the train do to prevent the mishap before he failed in his efforts? And more importantly, what is the preparedness of the railway in preventing disasters as envisaged in the Disaster Management Act 2005 and related policies?

Assembly of people on the railway track, even if they are ‘trespassers’ should not be mowed down by a train, especially in case of prior knowledge of such an assembly on the track. Our minister of state for railways must know that they had either prior knowledge of the assembly on the track or they failed in their duty to know what had been happening on their track for hours before the mishap. In both the cases, it is dereliction of duty of the railway staff and officials. ‘Trespassers’ did not come suddenly on the track and, therefore, the railway officials and staff had time enough to prevent the disaster. They have also a system of signals (yellow for drive carefully, and red to stop) on strategic points visible to train drivers at least from one kilometer away. Any statement from the minister of state for railways giving a clean chit to itself before completion of probe on all aspects of accident is not acceptable.

Moreover, there is something called public administration, which regulates all lawful or unlawful assembly of people. Merely telling the people that the organizers did not have requisite permissions from the municipal corporation, police, pollution department or the district administration does not prove that the state administration was fully prepared for handling such a large assembly of people for whatever reason. Preventing any disaster during any assembly of people is the administration’s responsibility. The incident clearly involved misadministration on the part of the state as well as unpreparedness in preventing disasters. Such celebrations had been an annual feature at the place of occurrence and, therefore, the state administration must have some mechanism in place for handling it successfully without any disaster. The state, therefore, is also responsible for this mishap.

Organizers of celebrations are also responsible for the safety of the people assembled there, for which they should have worked in close cooperation with the state administration and the railways, which they seem to have avoided in their zest. The people on the track were also clearly at fault by ignoring their own safety. It is not that the organizers or the people were unaware of the danger. They were fully aware of the danger but did not take precautions. If we don’t want such disasters to recur, we, the common people, also must cooperate with the authorities responsible for management of the assembly of people. (IPA Service)