Fixing responsibility of such a accident is serious a serious activity. It can never be fixed before reading and analysing the final report of the expert committee formed to probe into the accident. If the question is who is the most probable culprit it is possible to give an answer.
Prima facie, the officer who ignored the report of the driver and did not bothered to get the train inspected even at Orai where the train had a 5 minute scheduled stop (between the accident spot and Jhansi), and instead preferred to sleep comfortably at night and asked the LP to go ahead (at full speed) till Kanpur (200kms away) appears to be main culprit.
Negligence...
more... of the TTE by way of ignoring the complaints made by S1 paxs regarding very loud and unusual noises is just appalling.
Had TTE got the coach checked at Jhansi or the concerned IR official bothered to get the train inspected at Orai and instructed to go ahead at lower safe speed, the accident would not have happened.If the expert committee report too have similar findings and no other hidden things underlie the incidence, then the official is culprit.
One thing which is typical in IR, is the fact that many top officials appear to believe in dictatorship rather than teamwork. When a top official visit a RS, special cleansing etc is done for appeasement much like a politicians visit. Top official shall inspect and dress down the subordinates and direct to get so & so done (without giving adequate resources) and media shall report the same in newspapers! Saloon type facilities, subordinates working at homes as reported are reminiscent of British Raj and does not gel well with today's management practices. It appears that taking a cue from politicians, senior officials too have started to govern IR rather than managing it on scientific principles.
Options like RM is extremely ridiculous, the steps taken by the RM towards safety is unparalleled since last 2 decades. His job is to make policies and allocate funds for safety of IR. This job has been done in a very good manner. He is one of the most efficient, dynamic, honest and the least politically expedient amongst the lot of RMs. If an accident is caused by negligence of IR official, how one can ask for the head of RM? He has laid enormous emphasis on safety and increased the allocations for safety related works like track renewals, electronic interlocking of stations,eliminating Level crossings(ROB/RUB) etc from previous levels of 3000-4000 crore Rs to a whopping 7500 crore Rs., refrained from introducing too many trains to the extent possible, sped up the capacity augmentation projects like doubling/tripling, new line with a direct result of commissioning 7-8 km of new track per day against the average of 4 km per day of last few years, has already been achieved. Targets for next years is to double it to whopping 18-19 kms per day!!. The congestion of tracks is the single biggest reason of accidents & present RM has done a great job in removing the congestion through huge allocations for capacity augmentation projects, but the benefits shall come to IR only after these huge projects start getting commissioned after a couple of years. Had he been RM for last 10 years with free hand to pursue his growth and development oriented policies, the IR would have been something else today.