Slums take steam out of stately station

Hawkers Evicted But Commuters Fear They’ll Be Back In A Flash

Mumbai: Once a magnificent structure, the Bandra station is now in a shambles.
    While shanties and heaps of garbage line its eastern side, the entrance on the western side is forever teeming with hawkers, screaming and selling their goods to the crowd rushing in and out. The only saving grace is that the facade of the structure—a British Raj legacy built in 1888—received a makeover recently; thanks to the facelift, the exterior, which was suffocated behind years of grime, has been scrubbed clean.
    However, inside, it makes for a rather sorry picture. The slum near the station has spilled onto a huge
portion of railway premises, putting the overall hygiene of the station at stake. The unpleasant scene becomes all the more evident as one walks down the foot overbridge (FoB) towards the skywalk; with four-storey slums rising on either side, it feels like walking through a tunnel which has huts for walls. The ‘Queen of the Suburbs’ station definitely deserves a cleaner treatment.
    If sources are to be believed, the situation has gone out of the railways’ control. According to them, the elevated booking office on the eastern side was built after slum dwellers set up shop on the ground floor and refused to budge from there. “The railways was left with no other option but to set up the booking office on another floor,’’ a source said. The Western Railway (WR), which is in charge of the station, however, did not confirmed this.
    Even the new 12-m FOB, which connects the skywalk to the station, had to be terminated abruptly at an unscheduled location as the slums came in the way.
    However, efforts are now on to clean the station and make it commuter-friendly. Though the authorities can hardly do anything about the slums, a drive is on to keep the hawkers at bay. When TOI visited the station on Friday morning, the premises was clear of any seller around. Trina Remedios, a content writer and Bandra resident for the past 12 years, however, do not feel too sure about how long the hawkers can be kept away. “With the sellers blocking the way, it gets rather difficult to enter the station. And inside, the slum dwellers make it very filthy; they defecate in the open and on the tracks. It is terrible to use the Harbour Line platforms,’’ she said.
    Another commuter complained that the railways is always late in taking action. “As soon as squatters start taking over a place, they should be removed. Once an entire colony of shanties comes up, it’s impossible to get rid of the problem,’’ he said.
    WR chief PRO S S Gupta agreed that the slums created a nuisance. “Not only do these people encroach on railway lands but some of them are also thieves who target commuters.’’ They hit the passengers with a rod or hurl stones at them and then make away with their bags and cellphones. Gupta added that regular drives were conducted to evict hawkers as well as slum dwellers; sometimes help from the state government was also sought to avoid law and order problems. He added that stations were not isolated areas and they could not do much about the hawkers as some of them had the sanction to set up their shops on BMC lands. “The RPF often conduct eviction drives but they keep coming back,’’ said a railway official.
    roana.costa@timesgroup.com ATTENTION BANDRA
A QUICK LOOK
Built in: November 1888 Distance from Churchgate: 15 km
Commuters using the station per day: 1.65 lakh (approx) suburban Foot-over-bridges: 3 Platforms: 7 Ambulance: Available from 8.10 am to 8 pm and can be called at night. Officials say it reaches the station within 10-15 minutes
SERVICES
First and last trains: 4.17 am to Churchgate and 1.30 am to Borivli WR trains starting from Bandra:
57 Trains halting here: 1,086 Locals halting here: 1.029 Harbour Line trains starting here: 43 Harbour Line trains passing through: 67