Three days before the stampede on the Elphinstone Road Station that has left 22 people dead, a commuter had tweeted a picture of the same foot-over bridge with what looked like a sea of humanity on it. Tagging Western Railway and railway minister Piyush Goyal on the tweet, he had requested them to “please do something” about it. The foot-over bridge connects Parel and Elphinstone Road stations on Mumbai’s crumbling suburban network.
True to the bureaucratic style of functioning that the country’s babus are used to, Western Railway responded saying that the matter has been forwarded to Central Railway, shrugging off its responsibility. It is a technical matter. Elphinstone Road station or Prabhadevi as it is now called falls under Western Railway and Parel under the jurisdiction of Central railway, and between the two they have not been able to decide whose responsibility it is to fix the problem.
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This is not the first time that commuters brought the surging crowds on this bridge – a regular feature -- to the notice of the railway authorities. Commuters have been posting pictures of the over-crowded bridge on social media since past two years. Former railway minister Suresh Prabhu and railway authorities were consistently tagged in the posts.
No one seems to have paid any heed as no concrete steps were taken to either control the access on the bridge or to expand the bridge – a six-feet-wide one, made more than 100 years ago. The Parel station was opened in 1877. Sources say that some men of Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Home Guards were deployed during peak hours to control the flow of the commuters on the bridge. Though it is a matter of investigation, sources tell Outlook that the RPF personnel were missing at the time of the accident.
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The question is who should be held accountable for such an accident? Generally, it is the duty of the Station Master to ensure that the crowds in the station are regulated. Shockingly, most stations on Mumbai suburban network including Parel and Elphinstone Road do not have stations masters. There is only a ticket counter for selling tickets. These stations become the responsibility of the Senior Divisional Manager and the Divisional Railway Manager (DRM), who sit far from the stations under their jurisdiction.
DRM of Central Railway sits at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) and Western Railway DRM is based in Mumbai Central railway station. In case of an emergency at the suburban stations, there is only the motorman – the driver of the local train – who can inform the headquarters. It is also the responsibility of the DRM to ensure the upkeep of the infrastructure including the foot-over bridge. As per rules, the foot-over bridge should have a screen on the sides to keep commuters safe from high-power induction current and also proper earthing facilities. According to one version, the stampede was triggered after one commuter got electrocuted.
Coming back to the railway hierarchy, in such a scenario, it is General Manager (GM) who has to ensure that the bridge widening is done at the earliest or an alternate route made available to the commuters.
There was a proposal to build a skywalk to ease the congestion from the foot-over bridge some years ago. One skywalk was built at Bandra station and it was proposed to make one in Parel-Elphinstone Road by then chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. However, after he died, the proposal was also given a burial.
The accountability should go right up to the level of the railway ministers – Goyal, before him Prabhu and maybe even his predecessors – who seem to have done nothing to address the urgent issue of the crumbling suburban structure in Mumbai.
