Piyush Goyal chaired Railway Ministry is all set to introduce Artificial Intelligence and CCTV cameras in order to enhance the safety of passengers across the Indian Railways’ network. Recently, Railway Board Chairman, Vinod Kumar Yadav was quoted in a PTI report saying that soon, as many as 58,600 coaches in Mail/Express trains of Indian Railways will be equipped with CCTV surveillance system. The CCTV surveillance systems have already been installed at over 500 railway stations across the country. The matter of passenger safety was discussed in the Parliamentary Standing Committee recently, he said.
The Railway Board Chairman said that Indian Railways will put CCTV cameras in all these coaches in corridors as well as above the door. Yadav further claimed that by March 2022, all railway stations across the country will be covered. Among the train coaches that are planned for CCTV installation in the first phase, tenders have been invited for as many as 7,020 coaches and a total of 6,100 railway stations. This should be done by next year, while the remaining coaches will be covered by March 2022, Yadav stated.
In addition, with all the CCTV cameras getting installed at train coaches and railway stations, Artificial Intelligence, as well as face recognition software, are likely to be introduced by the national transporter to use analytics to recognize the faces of criminals and nab them.
Meanwhile, Yadav also informed that a total of 120 pairs of Integral Coach Factory (ICF) trains have been converted into faster and safer Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) trains by utilizing as many as 156 LHB rakes. He also informed that 104 passenger trains have been converted into Mainline Electric Multiple Unit (MEMU). Moreover, from April 2019 to November 2019, as many as 38,331 bio-toilets have been installed in 11,703 train coaches, taking the total numbers of bio-toilets to 2,34,248 fitted in 65,627 train coaches, he added.