The Ministry of Railways has approved a Rs 341 crore project to deploy Kavach, an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system, across several key routes to improve operational safety, prevent train collisions and over-speeding. The system makes rail operation safer by automatically applying brakes in critical situations. On Monday, the national transporter approved the installation of Kavach Version 4.0 on 598 Route km (RKM) covering 48 block sections of the Ahmedabad Division of Western Railway in Gujarat, at a sanctioned cost of Rs 140 crore. The work has been approved under the umbrella programme for the provision of Kavach with LTE-based communication backbone on balance routes of Indian Railways. Earlier, Kavach work had been sanctioned on around 702 RKM in the Ahmedabad Division. Indian Railways also approved the implementation of Kavach on 811 RKM at a sanctioned cost of Rs 201 crore in the Ambala Division of Northern Railway. This will cover important sections such as Ambala Cantonment-Ludhiana, Kalka-Chandigarh-New Morinda-Sahnewal, Sirhind-Daulatpur Chowk, Rajpura-Bathinda-Shri Ganganagar and Ludhiana-Dhuri-Jakhal. These routes serve as key rail corridors connecting Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, handling substantial passenger and freight traffic. Kavach Version 4.0 is the most advanced version of India's indigenous ATP system. It automatically protects against Signal Passing at Danger (SPAD), head-on and rear-end collision risks, continuously monitors and controls over-speeding, and ensures safety even in low visibility and adverse weather. It complies with SIL-4 safety standards, the highest level of safety integrity globally.