Indian Railways to complete RFID-tagging in All Wagons by Dec 2022

The Indian Railways has decided to complete the job of fitting radio-frequency identification tags in all the wagons of the transporter as these tags will be used for tracking the wagons. Indian Railways is planning to complete tagging of all wagons by December 2022.

Details of the Announcement

As per the statement issued by the Ministry of Railways, around 23000 wagons have been covered under the RFID project and the process of tagging these wagons was already underway before the pandemic. But now due to the lockdown and prevailing situations, it has slowed down. But now the deadline has been revised to December 2022 for completion of this project.

The Indian Railways is maintaining the data of the wagons manually now and it leaves the scope of errors. However, if the RFID tags are used, it will be very much convenient for the railways to know the exact positions of all the wagons, locomotives and coaches.

The RFID tags will be fitted in the rolling stock whereas the trackside readers will be installed at stations and key points along the tracks to read the tag from a distance of about two meters and transmit the wagon identity over a network to a central computer. This way each moving wagon will be identified easily and its movement can also be tracked without any hassle.

The recurring issue of shortage of wagons, locomotives and coaches is also expected to be solved with this step, in a more transparent and expeditious manner.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2020