While disposing of a Public Interest Litigation application, the hon’ble Supreme Court imposed a complete ban on procurement as well as use of wooden sleepers by Railways in the whole of India in may 1999. Later on pleading by Railways, though the Supreme Court vide its order dated Feb. 21, 2000 allowed the use of wooden sleepers already procured and lying in the Railway Stores, yet further procurement remained banned. Due to this ban, procurement of wooden sleepers has not been possible after 1998-99 and the process of renewal of bridge timbers and wooden layouts under Points and crossings got a setback.
A special application was filed in the Supreme Court to allow Railways to procure and use wooden sleepers to the...
more... limited extent of their absolute minimum requirement of 20000 cum per annum for use on girders bridges and non-standard/special layouts.
The Apex court vide its order dated Feb. 2002, has lately allowed Railways to procure 20000 cum wooden sleepers for girder bridges and special layouts per annum by way of import. Court has also permitted to procure 13472 cum of wooden sleepers from Madhya Pradesh Export Corporation (MPEC), which were lying with the corporation duly manufactured against Railways order at the time of imposing the ban. As per the directions of the Supreme Court, Railways has since taken supply of wooden sleepers form MPEC and distributed between all the Zonal Railways as per their requirement. Railways has also taken action to procure wooden special sleepers through open tender.