Mumbai: Commuters fume after CR General Manager skips Kurla station inspection

CR, GM Ram Karan Yadav during inspection

The top boss of Central Railway, General Manager, Ram Karan Yadav, on Sunday, visited a host of suburban railway stations but skipped the most important junction of Kurla suburban station where a host of crucial projects have been stranded for years. Chaos and crowd management are a daily issue with one of the main over foot bridges shut for repairs.

"Why didn't they take him to Kurla suburban station? What are they hiding? We had hoped that the top boss and the leader would have visited Kurla suburban station to see its condition and used his expertise to guide the railway team. But he did a masterstroke by avoiding the problem instead of offering solutions. He visited stations where some good work had been done or projects had been moving ahead and seem to have avoided the problematic station," Yatri Sangh Mumbai president Subhash Gupta said.

Work on elevated station has been ignored for years

As per the details available, the General Manager and his team were supposed to halt at 14 places, including big and small stations like Dadar, Matunga, Sion, Ghatkopar and Mulund as a part of his annual inspection of the Mumbai division. As per official details, work on Kurla elevated station is being done by the construction department of Central Railway and it is a known fact that the work has been going on for a decade without much progress.

"Yadav's visit and assessment, drawing on his extensive experience as the Chief Administrative Officer (Construction) on Western Railway and North Eastern Railway, where he achieved the highest commissioning of railway lines and contributed to station development in Nagpur and various key projects, could have significantly accelerated the progress of work at Kurla," Gupta added.

"Work at the Kurla elevated station has been progressing at a snail's pace despite being a crucial junction used by thousands of passengers daily. The station seems neglected, with even the local MP showing little concern. It's understandable in the political context, but commuters question how an officer can also neglect their duty at the station," said a commuter.

Issues at Kurla station encompass stagnant construction at the incomplete elevated station, encroachments on both east and west premises, subpar maintenance of subway access, persistent hawker presence in the subway, congestion on the narrow harbour line platforms, excess passenger amenities, and numerous canteens contributing to overcrowding.

Officials refuted the allegations and said that Kurla will soon see an improvement. "Kurla elevated station is a part of the Kurla-Parel 5th and 6th line project, which has been stalled due to land acquisition delays. About the inspection, it is very difficult to go to every spot in suburban section while keeping the trains running and would have led to a lot of local train cancellations, inconveniencing commuters.

Top officials will soon visit Kurla and assess it," a senior official said. During his inspection, the General Manager met with passenger associations from Kalwa and Kalyan. They presented their demands and documented the meeting with photographs. "We have asked the General Manager to take the problem of Kalwa seriously and build a home platform for the increasing number of crowds," a passenger association member said. Due to extreme crowding, commuters at Kalwa board exit local trains from the Kalwa car shed.

14
No of stations that were due inspection