One more railway accident : Railway Board chairman resigns

Ashok Mittal, Chairman of the Railway Board on Wednesday resigned on moral ground, following two major railway accidents in last five days.

Mittal submitted his resignation to Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu today morning, but officials in the Railway Bhavan refused to confirm this.

Mittal was supposed to retire in July 2016 but got an extension of two years till 2018.

Two railway major accident happened in the last five days with the latest one was Kaifyat Express derailment at Auriya in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday early morning. As many as 74 passengers were injured as nine bogies of the train derailed. According to railway officials train derailed after dashing against a dumper carrying construction material for railway work, officials here said.

The train travelling from Azamgarh to Delhi collided with the dumper at around 2:50 am between Pata and Achhalda railway stations, a spokesperson for the North Central Railway (NCR) said. This is the second train accident in Uttar Pradesh in last five-day.


On Saturday, Utkal Express derailed in Khatauli near Muzaffarnagar leaving over 22 dead and 156 others injured. After preliminary probe found that unscheduled track maintenance works caused the derailment, the railway ministry sent three top officials- Member (Engineer) in the Railway Board, Aditya Kumar Mittal, Northern Railway General Manager R K Kulshrestha and Divisional Railway Manager (Delhi) R N Singh were on leave.

Besides the Ministry had suspended four of its other officials and transferred one officer from Delhi Division of Northern Railway.