Shares of HBL Power Systems and Kernex Microsystems rallied up to 10 percent on Monday amid expectations that the Odisha train tragedy will boost contracts for the 'Kavach system', an automatic train protection system, which in turn will be positive for these two firms which provide related services.
HBL surged as much as 10.1 percent to its 52-week high of ₹123.70, while Kernex Microsystems hit 5 percent upper circuit at ₹297.55.
HBL has advanced 15 percent just in June so far and 25 percent in 2023 YTD. It has risen 18 percent in the last 1 year.
Kernex, on the other hand, has also risen over 15 percent just in June and is up around 7.5 percent in 2023 YTD. The stock has jumped 48.5 percent in the last 1 year.
The Odisha train tragedy involved a crash between Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express and Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express, which were carrying around 2,500 passengers, and a goods train. It occurred around 7 pm on Friday near the Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore. At least 288 people died and over 1,100 were injured in the accident.
Many believe that the tragedy could have been avoided by the 'Kavach system'. Kavach, which means armor, is an automatic train protection system that was developed in 2022 by the Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO). It was announced in the 2022 Union Budget as a part of the Atmanirbhar Bharat initiative.
In this system, a signal is passed when a train passes a stop signal and it takes control of the speed of the train by automatically applying the brakes in case the loco pilot fails to do so, thus avoiding a tragedy.
The system helps especially in cases of human error when a locomotive pilot ignores or jumps a signal or over-speeds. The system can assist train operations even during bad weather conditions.
It was mainly designed to bring a train to a halt automatically if it detects another train on the same line within a specified distance.
The system so far has been deployed on 1,098 kilometers of railway routes and work is underway to deploy it on 1,200 kilometers of railway routes of the South Central Railway. However, the system was not yet installed on the route of the tragedy.
