Train Tragedy And Rail Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw's Balasore Connection

Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who is regarded as one of the Narendra Modi government’s high-performing ministers, is facing growing calls for his resignation from a united Opposition in the wake of the deadliest triple train crash in Odisha’s Balasore district. The Congress-led Opposition parties have accused Vaishnaw of ‘utter negligence’ and “incompetence” over the train pile-up which left around 278 dead and more than 1,000 injured in what is being seen as one of the century’s biggest train disasters.

While attacking the Narendra Modi government, the Opposition has accused the Centre of not spending enough on improving railway safety despite multiple warnings by the CAG, parliamentary standing committees and experts. However, not many know that the accident fatality rate on Indian Railways has improved significantly in the past few years due to several steps taken by the government and the Rail Ministry.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, who at the time of the tragedy said that a technical glitch with the signalling system could have caused Friday's devastating train crash in Odisha's Balasore district, has spent sleepless nights since the news about the tragedy first broke.

Vaishnaw, who has since camped in Odisha’s Balasore, supervising the relief and rescue works along with other agencies, ensuring the restoration of the affected tracks and resuming train movement besides helping the victims, has been PM Modi’s point person to deal with the great tragedy. 

The Union Railway Minister, who was in Goa to inaugurate the Vande Bharat train from Panjim to Mumbai, immediately returned to Delhi and took charge of the rescue operation from the airport itself before he finally reached the accident spot on a chartered flight at 3 AM. Upon reaching there, Vaishnaw swung into action and personally inspected the damage.

Not many know that Vaishnaw shares a strange coincidence with Balasore – the site of the devasting triple train crash in Odisha. After clearing the Civil Services Examination, Vaishnaw served as the District Collector of Balasore during the 90s. He also served as the collector of Cuttack. He served in Odisha till 2003 before being appointed as deputy secretary in the office of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. During his brief stint in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), he was hailed for his immense contribution towards creating the PPP framework in infrastructure projects. He was later appointed as Vajpayee’s private secretary after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was defeated in the 2004 general elections.

The Union Rail Minister holds an MBA degree from Wharton School, Pennsylvania University. A gold medallist in the electronic and communications engineering course at the MBM Engineering College (JNVU) at Jodhpur in Rajasthan, he completed his MTech from IIT Kanpur. He later cracked the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) in 1994 with an all-India rank of 27.
 
On completing his MBA from the Wharton School, Vaishnaw returned to India and took a leadership role at GE Transportation as Managing Director. After some time, he then joined Siemens as Vice President for locomotives and head of the urban infrastructure strategy department. he, however, quit the corporate sector in 2012 to set up two automotive components manufacturing units in Gujarat. 

He has been a Member of the Parliament since 2019 representing Odisha in the Rajya Sabha. He was elected to the Rajya Sabha mainly due to the support from the Biju Janata Dal. Besides the Ministry of Railways, Vaishnaw also retains the IT and Communications portfolios.