Amritsar Train Accident | Latest Burning Issues | Free PDF Download

THE ENTIRE SOUTH ASIA IS SAD

Sri Lankan Prime Minister RanilWickremesinghe, who at present is in New Delhi, in his message to Modi said: “I am deeply saddened to hear about the tragic train accident in Amritsar last night.”

 SO WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED?

• 19 October 2018
• The crowd had gathered to watch celebrations for the Hindu festival of Dussehra and were standing on the tracks.
• The spectators were sitting on or near the tracks in the Joda Phatak area in the outskirts of Amritsar.
• The accident occurred in the early evening, killing at least 61 people and injuring an additional 100.

DETAILS

• The driver reported the accident immediately to the Amritsar Junction station master and was detained by the police for questioning.
• Railways Minister Piyush Goyal later denied any negligence on the driver’s part and stated that no action was being taken against him.
• Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh announced compensation of ₹5 lakh for the family of each of those killed, and free treatment for the injured.
• There was no immediate decision about any compensation from the railways.
• The central government also announced a compensation of ₹2 lakh for the family of each of the dead and ₹50,000 for the injured. The state announced a day of mourning in honour of the victims

CIVIL SERVICES MAINS GENERAL STUDIES PAPER 3 Disaster and disaster management.

NATIONAL DISASTER MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY (INDIA) National Disaster Management Authority, abbreviated as NDMA is an agency of the Ministry of Home Affairs whose primary purpose is to coordinate response to natural or man-made disasters and for capacity-building in disaster resiliency and crisis response

 NDMA’S GUIDELINES ON CROWD MANAGEMENT

• NDMA had released an elaborate document at this link for integrated crowd management.
• As per this document, the integrated crowd management is based on several pillars such as capacity planning, risk assessment, improved preparedness planning, incidence response, capacity building

SEVERAL PARAMETERS

• Type of event (such as religious, schools/ university, sports event, music event, political event, product promotion etc.)
• Expected Crowd (age, gender, economic strata etc. such as farmers, shopkeepers)
• Crowd Motives (such as social, academic, religious, entertainment, economic etc.)
• Venue (location, topography of area, temporal or permanent, open or closed, public or private)
• Role of other stake holders (such as NGOs, neighbours of event venue, local administrators etc)
• High Level Safety Review Committee (Railways)
• The Ministry of Railways had appointed a High Level Safety Review Committee under the chairmanship of Dr.Anil Kakodkar to review the safety of the Indian Railways and recommend improvements. The Committee recently presented its report. The Committee recommends a total financial investment of Rs 1,00,000 crore over a five year period.

WAY FORWARD

• In most of the cases, the crowd disasters are man-made disasters and such tragedies can be prevented with proactive planning and execution by the authorities involved. Apart from that lessons should be learnt from past mistakes.
• Every member of society is the stakeholder in such disaster prevention. NDMA should also focus on a central repository of incidences so that lessons can be learnt from past.

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