The accident took place near Fatehpur Sahib when a passenger train rammed into the coaches of a cargo train which had derailed and fallen on the neighbouring track.
The driver of the passenger train said he had immediately applied emergency brakes on noticing derailed coaches on the track but by then it was too late.
The train was going from the eastern Indian city of Calcutta to Amritsar in Punjab-- a distance of 1,600 kilometres.
In a similar accident two years ago in the state, 260 people were killed when Sealdah Express train rammed into the coaches of another train whose bogies had fallen on its track after derailment.
Press reports said the railway officials blamed the derailments on the poor quality of the steel supplied by state-owned steel plants. The tracks tended to crack unexpectedly because of the high hydrogen content in the steel, they said.
In August last year some 500 people were reported dead after two trains collided on the same track in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. Officials admitted to only about 300 deaths.
In all there were 204 railway accidents between April and August this year compared to 160 during the same period last year. Derailments also went up by nearly 33 per cent during the period.
India has a massive railway network of 62,000 kilometres traversed by about 12,000 trains in which some 11 million passengers travel daily.
Experts say the network is poorly maintained and recommendations for railway safety made by committees investigating accidents are often not implemented.
(dpa)