New Delhi: Indian Railways has commissioned Kavach 4.0 across 2,633 route kilometres on the high-density Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah corridors, while its expenditure during the first four months of 2026-27 has reached nearly ₹1.15 lakh crore.
Out of the total budget grant of ₹2,93,030 crore for the current financial year, the Railways utilised ₹1,14,973 crore up to July 2026, representing around 39 per cent of the allocation, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw informed the Lok Sabha on 5 August.
Kavach 4.0 had been commissioned on 2,633 route kilometres as of 31 July, including 1,423 route kilometres on the Delhi-Mumbai corridor and 1,210 route kilometres on the Delhi-Howrah corridor.
The Delhi-Mumbai coverage includes 1,327 route kilometres on the Tilak Bridge-Junction Cabin-Palwal-Mathura-Kota-Nagda-Ratlam-Vadodara-Virar section and 96 route kilometres between Vadodara and Ahmedabad.
On the Delhi-Howrah corridor, Kavach has been commissioned across sections including Chipyana-Tundla-Kanpur-Subedarganj, Kanpur-Lucknow, Mirzapur-DDU excluding DDU, DDU FOC-Bhabua Road, Sasaram-Pheser, Gaya-Sarmatarn-Nimiaghat and Chota Ambana-Bardhaman-Howrah.
The total includes around 470 route kilometres across the Vadodara-Virar, Gaya-Sarmatarn and Junction Cabin-Palwal sections, where Kavach was commissioned on 30 January 2026.
Indian Railways has also taken up trackside Kavach implementation across another 21,794 route kilometres, covering the Golden Quadrilateral, Golden Diagonal, high-density network and other identified sections.
As part of the deployment, 11,547 kilometres of optical fibre cable have been laid, 1,721 telecom towers installed and station data centres established at 1,009 stations.
Trackside equipment has been installed across 7,726 route kilometres, while 6,290 locomotives have been equipped with Kavach.
Work has separately been taken up to install the system on another 7,190 locomotives and 1,200 EMU and MEMU units.
Kavach trials at 160 kmph have also been completed successfully with a Vande Bharat trainset on the Chipyana Buzurg-Tundla section.
The Railways utilised ₹3,875 crore on Kavach works up to June 2026. An allocation of ₹2,066 crore has been made for the system during 2026-27.
Kavach is an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection system that can automatically apply brakes when a loco pilot fails to maintain the prescribed speed. It also assists train operations during adverse weather conditions.
The Kavach 4.0 specification was approved by the Research Designs and Standards Organisation in July 2024 after earlier deployment and field experience with Kavach 3.2 across 1,465 route kilometres of the South Central Railway network.
Safety-related railway expenditure has increased from ₹39,200 crore in 2013-14 to a budget provision of ₹1,20,389 crore in 2026-27. The corresponding expenditure stood at ₹1,17,693 crore in 2025-26.
Indian Railways has also upgraded the speed potential of a larger part of its network. Around 81 per cent of the railway track is now capable of supporting speeds of at least 110 kmph.
The length of track capable of supporting speeds of 130 kmph and above increased from 5,036 kilometres in 2014 to 24,173 kilometres in 2026. Another 62,482 kilometres can support speeds between 110 kmph and 130 kmph.
The New Delhi-Mumbai and New Delhi-Howrah routes have also been taken up for increasing speed potential to 160 kmph under Mission Raftaar.
Railway infrastructure expansion has accelerated alongside the safety and speed upgrades. Between 2014 and 2026, the Railways commissioned 36,429 kilometres of new track at an average rate of 8.32 kilometres per day, compared with 7,599 kilometres and an average of 4.2 kilometres per day between 2009 and 2014.
As of 1 April 2026, the Railways had sanctioned 514 projects covering 40,000 kilometres at an estimated cost of around ₹8.31 lakh crore. These include 169 new-line projects, 29 gauge-conversion projects and 316 doubling projects.
Of the total sanctioned length, 12,583 kilometres had been commissioned up to March 2026, while cumulative expenditure stood at ₹3,05,253 crore.
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