'Kavach system covers 2k-km rail network'

New Delhi: Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday told the Lok Sabha that progress on the installation of the Kavach system was "very fast" and 2,000 km of the rail network had been brought under the system.Replying during the Question Hour in the Lok Sabha, he said the Kavach is a complex system which has five major systems within, including laying down of optical fibre cable (OFC) all along the tracks and installation of telecom towers.The Indian Railways has completed laying 7,129 kilometres of OFC cables, installed 860 telecom towers, covered with data centres 767 stations, installed trackside equipment along 3,413 km, and installed 4,154 locomotives."Apart from that, the complete commissioning of the system is today more than 2,000 kilometres. The progress is very fast," he said.'Kavach' is an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system.The minister added that 40,000 technicians and operators have been trained because this is a "very" complex and totally new system.On a supplementary question asked by DMK's Kalanidhi Veeraswamy on rail accidents, the minister said compared to 2014, when the number of consequential accidents was 135, the government has been able to "bring it down by 90 per cent to 11."