Audit Reports

Railways

Overview

This Report contains the audit findings of significant nature during the compliance audit of Ministry of Railways (Railway Board) of the Union Government and its field offices for the year ended 31 March 2011. The report contains six chapters. Chapter 1 presents a broad outline of the scheme of the Report and Chapters 2 to 7 present detailed findings /observations under relevant department title.The study revealed that increase in rake turnover was hampered due to deficient planning and delays in implementation. There were immediate positive gains in terms of reduced detention in the limited number of cases where the Goods sheds were upgraded, though in some others, these resulted in a decline.

The study revealed that besides improper planning of train services and inadequacies of maintenance facilities, there were delays in commissioning of new coaches meant for replacement of conventional trains.The study revealed that the progress made by Railways in providing requisite equipment for safe running of trains was far from satisfactory. It also revealed that though the IR had achieved the objective of increasing their earnings but simultaneously the expenditure on account of frequent wear and tear to rails and extensive damages to wagons parts such as CBC, draft gears, wheels and Axles assemblies, brake gears, etc. had also increased.The study revealed stations/sidings were notified as capable of handling full rake traffic regardless of the actual facilities available. This had not served the purpose of achieving economy by avoiding the detention as placement of wagons for loading/unloading continued to be done in a piece meal fashion causing incurrence of extra operational cost.

Despite the concerns expressed by the PAC, the performance of the Indian Railways in safeguarding its title to land and ensuring proper maintenance of land records continued to remain unsatisfactory. Though in a number of cases Railway land was allowed to be occupied by the PSUs/other Government Department and private parties, Zonal Railways had failed to take effective action to execute license agreements and recover the license fee from the licensees.Audit observed that the objectives of setting up Civil Engineering Workshops to help Railways in meeting their demand of essential components required for day to day maintenance of tracks and manufacture of girders for bridges etc. had not been fully met due to lack of clear strategic direction.

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• Index
• Preface
• Overview
• Chapter 1 – Introduction
• Chapter 2 - Traffic - Commercial and Operations
• Chapter 3 - Engineering - Open line and Construction
• Chapter 4 - Mechnical - Zonal Hqrs/Workshops/Production Units
• Chapter 5 - Signal and Telecommunication
• Chapter 6 - Stores
• Abbreviations
• Annexures
• Chapter 1 - Financial Performance of Central Public Sector Undertakings