`Havan' organised by construction dept of Northern Railway to break the `jinx'

`Havan' organised by construction dept of Northern Railway to break the `jinx'
BHAVNA VIJ

NEW DELHI, JAN 12: The accident-prone Railways, it seems, have run out of ideas to improve safety on the tracks. They are now invoking God to tide over a ``dark period''.

A `havan' was conducted yesterday to seek divine intervention for making the Railways safer. The venue was the head office of construction and engineering department of Northern Railway (NR) at Kashmere Gate in central Delhi. The immediate cause was the second collapse of the loco shed at Tundla railway station on January 8, in which a labourer was injured. The shed had collapsed last September also, killing 25 persons.

The `havan' was organised by Norther Railways' Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) S.R. Ujailain, in charge of construction and engineering, and was attended by nearly 100 people, all of them from the department. The CAO and his staff are responsible for all the construction works and engineering related tasks of Northern Railway.

The biggest rail tragedies in recent years have taken place in the Northern Railways division, which included the Ferozabad collision in 1995 (310 passengers died), Khanna accident in 1998 (over 250) and the latest incident at Fatehgarh Sahib (48).

For two hours on Wednesday afternoon, the entire staff attended the `havan' and all railway work in the construction wing came to a standstill. `Halwa' was distributed as `prasad' at the end of it and normal work resumed. ``The CAO was very disturbed after the second collapse of the Tundla shed. He thought the Railways were being chased by bad luck and decided to organise the `havan','' said an official who attended it.

The 100-year-old loco shed was being demolished to make way for the construction of the Agra-Tundla railway line. At present all goods and passenger traffic from Tundla or Aligarh going towards Jaipur has to pass through Delhi, adding to the already over-congested route. The Agra-Tundla loop would ensure bypassing Delhi. The collapse of the shed for the second time has somehow convinced the construction staff that the project was jinxed, sources said.

``The construction workers and the field staff start work on all projects by breaking a coconut. It is a good omen. Puja or `havan' in itself is a wonderful thing but doing it at an official level is taking it a bit too far,'' said an officer who attended it.