India's Homegrown Kavach System Boosts Railway Safety on Major Corridors

Indian Railways has rolled out the indigenous Kavach automatic train protection system on 2,633 kilometres of high-traffic routes, aiming to curb human-error accidents.

Kavach, India’s indigenously built automatic train protection system, was adopted as the national ATP in July 2020 and has now been commissioned on 2,633 route kilometres, primarily the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah lines. The system relies on secure ultra-high-frequency radio links and track-mounted RFID tags to continuously inform locomotive pilots of speed limits, signal aspects and safe braking distances, intervening automatically when necessary.

Certified to Safety Integrity Level 4, Kavach is touted as a cost-effective alternative to systems like Europe’s ETCS, costing about Rs 50 lakh per kilometre versus up to Rs 2 crore. Analysts highlight challenges in scaling the technology, noting the need for simultaneous installation of trackside equipment, optical fibre, telecom towers and onboard units across the network. Industry voices such as Anshuman Chauhan, Santosh Misra and Sudhanshu Mani call for faster rollout and stronger vendor capacity to realise the system’s safety dividend. The next iteration, Kavach 5.0, is being designed for suburban services to support higher train frequencies.