New Delhi, May 11, 2026, 15:40 (IST)
Indian Railways has approved a ₹362-crore expansion of Kavach, its indigenous automatic train protection system, across nearly 1,478 route km in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, moving the safety programme deeper into the Northern Railway network. Kavach is designed to warn loco pilots and, in defined unsafe conditions, apply brakes automatically.
The decision matters now because Kavach is moving from selective commissioning into a larger execution phase. The Railway Ministry said in March that Kavach had been installed on 3,103 route km, with work in progress on 24,427 route km, including high-density and high-utilisation corridors.
It also lands as Jammu and Kashmir’s rail map is changing. Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 272-km Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla line in June 2025, connecting the Kashmir Valley to the Indian plains by train for the first time, the Associated Press reported.
Under the new package, Kavach will be installed over 1,012 route km in balance sections of the Firozpur Division at an estimated ₹241 crore. The Jammu Division will get around 466 route km at nearly ₹121 crore, covering Jalandhar City Junction-Jammu Tawi-Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra, Batala-Pathankot Junction and Banihal-Baramulla sections.
“The sanctioned works include provision of Kavach over nearly 1,478 route kilometres,” the Ministry of Railways said, according to The Indian Express. Route kilometres, or RKm, refers to the length of the route, not each separate track on a multi-track corridor. The Indian Express
Kavach is meant to cut the risk from human error and poor visibility. It protects against Signal Passing at Danger — SPAD, railway shorthand for a train passing a stop signal — and can act against overspeeding and head-on or rear-end collision risks, the ministry has said in earlier rollout notes.
The Northern Railway decision follows other Kavach-linked approvals across the network, including equipment for 232 Southern Railway locomotives, optical-fibre works in North Central Railway and electronic interlocking upgrades in South Central Railway. That puts the Punjab-J&K work inside a wider national safety and signalling buildout, not a one-off sanction.
The hardware will not be small. The sanctioned works include stationary Kavach systems, 40-metre communication towers and antenna infrastructure, The Statesman reported, citing an official. Those pieces are needed so locomotives, signals and trackside equipment can talk to each other.
But the approval is not the same as live protection on the line. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw told Parliament in March that Kavach is a “very complex system with five sub-systems”; the ministry separately says implementation needs station units, RFID tags along tracks, telecom towers, optical fibre and onboard locomotive equipment. Any weak link can slow commissioning. News On Air
For passengers, the practical test is not the sanction amount. It is when the named sections complete installation, testing and commissioning, and when trains running there are actually tied into the system.
