Maligaon, Jan 17: The incident of derailment site of 15633 Bikaner – Guwahati Express witnessed many admirable deeds. The N. F. Railway acted fast in the first hour, the most crucial hour of any accident.
This led to saving many important lives. Empathizing with the passengers and realising their immediate need for finances, Railway has paid ex-gratia payment at the shortest possible time, within hours of the accident to all the injured passengers.
Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, Hon’ble Minister of Railways, Communications, Electronics and Information Technology himself reached the accident site to have an on the spot assessment.
He also visited hospitals and interacted with the admitted passengers. Minister himself assured best possible health care facilities to all admitted passengers.
One of the injured passengers, Shri Kuldeep Rawat, upon interaction with Hon’ble Minister of Railways, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw at the Jalpaiguri Super Specialty Hospital, mentioned that his luggage was lost during the accident.
Shri Vaishnaw immediately activated the Railway machinery and his luggage was soon found and handed over to his caretaker and relative Shri Arun Kumar.
Minister of Railways while visiting the injured passengers at hospitals met Safikul Ali, hailing from Dhula of Assam who did not have mobile phone to communicate with his family.
The Minister took help from his other ministry and sent a postman to his native village. After failure to locate any family member by the postman, an announcement was made through the mosque, usually used for namaaz.
Through this announcement, his family members were informed and communicated with railway authorities. Thus, praiseworthy initiatives by the Minister touched the heart of everyone.
ART (Accident Relief Train) & ARME (Accident Relief Medical Equipment Van) staff of N. F. Railway did exemplary work during rescue operation which led to saving many lives. On receipt of the information, senior railway officials along with ART rushed towards the site from New Jalpaiguri and New Alipurduar jumped into the rescue operation.
Injured passengers were brought to the nearest hospitals and timely medical attention was paid to them. Thereafter, stranded passengers were sent to their destination stations by a special train.
All stranded passengers were provided with tea, drinking water, biscuits, snacks, dinner packets etc. Passengers were satisfied for quick rescue and arrangement of alternative travel arrangement and also providing food for all by railway authority.
Restoration work was done on war footing for normalization of train movement under the supervision of Shri Anshul Gupta, General Manager of N. F. Railway. The entire railway fraternity worked 24×7 without any break that resulted to restoration of the train movement through the accident affected section at the shortest possible time.
