Badlapur aftermath: Rush Hour in Mumbai locals may soon be history

Your commute to work and back home is set to change for the better with the state government on Sunday forming a committee to look into tweaking office hours.

Read Story: Thane: Rail roko at Badlapur station ends, services restored

The move aims to ease the pressure on the city's creaking infrastructure by reducing the load on the roads and local trains. The new work shifts and timings are expected to be first implemented in the railways and banks. These two sectors may soon start working in two shifts - 9 am to 5 pm and 11 am to 7 pm.

"We are soon going to do it (have a committee to look into the change of office timings)," Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who co-chaired a high-level meeting along with Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu on Sunday, told mid-day.

A senior railway official said Prabhu and Fadnavis had a long chat after which the railways agreed to be the first government employer to implement the new timings.

"We already are thinking of making shifts to work for our employees working in workshops, stores and other departments," said the official.

The concept has roots in a suo motu public interest litigation the Bombay High Court is hearing since December 2015. Questioning if working adherence to conventional work hours was more important than the cost of life a bench of Justices Naresh Patil and SB Shukre asked the state government to see if office timings and weekly offs could be changed to reduce congestion on local trains.

‘Change the timings of schools, colleges and government offices,' the bench had said during a hearing on December 15, 2015. Advocate Suresh Kumar, representing the Western Railways, said this would help reduce rush in the trains by 10 per cent.

‘There is no compulsion to follow a set pattern,' the bench had said. ‘This will be helpful to employees also. Break the set pattern of timing and weekly offs.'

The bench even went to the extent of asking if the state government and municipal corporation could run the Railways in Mumbai.

‘Why doesn't the state and municipal corporation not think of participating in the running of trains,' the two judges asked. ‘It is your people who are dying. You can do this in certain routes to see if it works. There is no use asking the Railway Ministry. It is happening in your city.'

Sources in the state government said the Fadnavis administration is very keen to implement the new timings and wants the banking sector to be the second after the railways to implement the new timings.

The committee's main job will be to decide how shifts will be introduced. Weekly offs may also be distributed through the week instead of just the weekends.

Sources added that the Badlapur incident where commuters got on the tracks and stopped the services for almost five hours because of a delay in trains was the trigger for the state's urgency.

Activist Speaks
"Will merely forming a committee help?" asked rail activist Sameer Zaveri. "Earlier too, the same Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu had formed a committee in December 2015 to study overcrowding in locals. Members of Parliament Poonam Mahajan, Kirit Somaiya and Arvind Sawant represented Mumbai, Rajan Vichare for Thane. IAS officers Ajoy Mehta and E Ravindran (Commissioner of Kalyan Dombivali Municipal Corporation) were also part of it. "That committee's report was submitted in January. A copy is available with me but till date none of the suggestions are accepted. If you are not going to accept the report of the committee then what's the use of forming it," said Zaveri.

Inputs by Shashank Rao