Yet another UPA scam? CBI smells rat in railway freight allocation

After 2G and Coalgate continuing to be a horrendous nightmare for the UPA in general and Congress in particular, one more nail on the coffin has been put. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has initiated a probe into the alleged loss of Rs 4,200 crore to the Railways in freight, according to an Economic Times.

Surprise checks conducted at 65 locations last week unearthed the fact that goods transported in trains are underweight in connivance with the railway officials and private companies.

"We have carried out surprise checks and found serious discrepancies," CBI spokesperson Kanchan Prasad told the ET. The checks were done along with the vigilance department of the Indian Railways.

The railways is known to have earned around 67% of its total revenues, Rs 85,262 crore by transporting 1,008 million metric tonnes of freight in 2012-13. The ET has reported, the railways collect freight charges from various transporters. The charges are levied based on the weight of the goods that are loaded in the wagons. Railways use both static and in-motion weigh bridges for weighing.

Electronic In-Motion Weigh Bridge (EIMWBs) have been developed by the railways in consultation with Research Development and Standards Organisation (RDSO) to plug the leakage of revenue and to avoid overloading of wagons. A goods trains passing at the speed of 15 kilometres per hour gets automatically weighed by this system.

Explaining the modus operandi to the ET, a senior official said, "The manipulations in weighment was done by tampering of the software, EIMWB hardware. The manual entries by the suspects led to significant loss of revenue for the railways. Even a 5% under-reporting of actual weight of freight leads to a loss of nearly Rs 4,200 crore. Such a manipulation also leads to overloading with adverse consequences for wear and tear of track and railway safety."

These EIMWBs are located at 200 locations out of which CBI conducted checks in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata among others. During the checks, CBI sleuths also found that the quantum of under-weighment increased with an increase in speed of the rake.

The CBI cops also secured the EIMWBs locations with the help of digital forensic experts to prevent the tampering of the machine. "We also took a forensic image of the hard disc of the EIMWB to enable a digital forensic analysis to locate the 'digital fingerprints' of past manipulation in weighment," said a senior CBI official.

Indian Railway spokesperson Anil Saxena acknowledged the checks were conducted by the CBI. He, however, downplayed the enormity of the scandal. "This is a regular exercise that is carried out by the Indian Railways to check corruption. We had only asked CBI and our vigilance department to conduct the checks," Saxena told the financial daily over phone.

(Image: India Times)