The core numbers
- More than 360 railway workers lost their lives in the last five years while carrying out maintenance work on train tracks, according to the Ministry of Railways' own response in the Rajya Sabha (specifically 361 deaths). ThePrint
- Going back further, a High Level Safety Review Committee headed by Anil Kakodkar found about 1,600 railway staff were killed and 8,700 injured while working during 2007-2008 to October 2011 — and in that same period, train accidents themselves killed 1,019 people. In other words, staff dying while doing maintenance work has historically exceeded passenger deaths from train accidents — and the committee noted these staff deaths are largely unsung and often not even included in official accident statistics. deccanheralddeccanherald
- The engineering/track department bore the brunt — 1,100 personnel lost while on duty in that span, with Mechanical department next at 110 deaths and 4,900 injuries. deccanherald
Recent trend — some genuine improvement
- The Railways Minister told the Rajya Sabha that track-maintenance staff deaths have dropped 66% since 2013-14, when there were 196 fatalities in that year alone. This is attributed to safety gear (luminous jackets, helmets with miner's lights, safety shoes, gloves, LED torches), lightweight and mechanized tools, and a "Rolling Block" maintenance system notified November 30, 2023, under which signalling asset maintenance is now planned up to 52 weeks in advance. Free Press JournalOdishaTv
- Still, the numbers remain serious in absolute terms — the government confirmed the RAKSHAK approaching-train warning system (meant to alert track workers) doesn't work reliably in hilly terrain, tunnels, deep cuttings, or sharp curves, and hasn't even been deployed on 55 divisions. ThePrint
Why maintenance workers die — the actual cause pattern
The recurring failure mode across incidents is workers on the track without a properly taken block, or a block that isn't respected/communicated:
- Four gangmen doing drilling work on a track in Hardoi 🌟, UP were run over by an express train — officials confirmed they were working "without any prior block," and noted proper procedure requires taking a specific block/time from the concerned zone so workers aren't caught between two approaching trains. pressreader
- A separate fatal incident raised questions about whether a worker had been assigned track (keyman) duties without proper specialised training, and whether he was working alone when protocol required a group. Devdiscourse
Why this matters for your PS 26027 project
This is genuinely useful ammunition for your Impact and Benefits slide, and honestly strengthens your pitch beyond "efficiency" — it gives you a safety/human-life angle:
- A big share of these fatalities trace back to exactly the coordination failure your PS targets: maintenance happening without a block being properly demanded, granted, or communicated in time. If block planning is manual and siloed across departments, gaps and confusion are more likely — informal or rushed work outside a sanctioned block window is a known root cause.
- Your AI scheduling engine, by generating clean, conflict-free, pre-approved block windows (instead of ad-hoc/late requests), reduces the incentive for crews to work outside a sanctioned window under time pressure — which is exactly the failure pattern in the Hardoi case.
- You could frame one impact bullet as: "Reduces the operational pressure that leads to maintenance work being carried out without a properly sanctioned block — a documented cause of track-worker fatalities (361 deaths in the last 5 years, per Ministry of Railways/Rajya Sabha data)."
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check it out if it’s useful🌟yesss beautiful! 