The tragedy at rail foot overbridge (FOB) connected to Elphinstone Road station in Mumbai was waiting to happen. From Twitterati to CAG to Members of Parliament and commoners, they all had warned authorities, including the incumbent Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and his predecessor Suresh Prabhu, about the impending stampede.
The Railways finally woke up after 22 people lost their lives. Minutes after the accident, the Railways floated a tender for an additional 40 feet FOB (worth Rs 13 crore) at Elphinstone station as announced in the 2016 Railway Budget.
Social media users had apprised Goyal and Prabhu about the bad shape of the bridge at Elphinstone Road station much earlier.
An old CAG report of 2015 has also surfaced specifically highlighting the structural default in the bridge.
The width of the bridge is incredibly narrow at certain places — even as less as 39 inches — which created a bottleneck situation during peak hours.
A daily commuter and Mumbai resident Chandan KK had tweeted to then Railway Minister Prabhu and PM Modi in July 28, 2016, “@sureshpprabhu @narendramodi Is central Mumbai station ‘Parel’ awaiting a stampedeIJ
“I travel on the Mumbai local train every day. I go to Elphinstone Road station twice a day every day, while coming from and going to work. The situation has been bad since 2009. It has always been overcrowded.”
Chandan claimed that he regretted the fact that he received no response. “In 2010, I even wrote to the Parel Station Master, asking him to look into this foot overbridge and take action. It seemed like a disaster was waiting to happen, but I received no response,” he said.
“On Friday morning I reached just 10-15 minutes after the stampede had taken place. The scenes I witnessed were chaotic.
If this is the response from Digital India we are talking about then we are living just at the mercy of God and social media remains a farce and only to spread voice of political masters,” an angry Chandan said.
Another Mumbaikar, Santosh Adhale, claimed that he posted about the poor condition of the bridge four days ago on his Facebook wall and also posted pictures of a packed foot overbridge. “#Central Railway Pls do something ... Parel bridge connected to Elephinston Road station. #Mumbailife #EveryDayChaos #MinistryofRailways.”
Two Shiv Sena MPs, Arvind Sawant and Rahul Shewale, had written to then Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu in 2015 pointing out that foot overbridge at Elphinstone Road was narrow and incapable of bearing the burden of passenger footfall during rush hours.
Prabhu had replied to Arvind Sawant that a wider bridge would be built in its place. In a letter dated February 20, 2016, Prabhu wrote the “construction of 12-metre wide new foot overbridge at Elphinstone Road was under the positive consideration of Railway Ministry.”
Construction of the new bridge, connecting Western Railway and Central Railway after extension of Platform No 1 and 2 towards north side by 100 metres, was under “positive consideration” of the Ministry, Prabhu had written in the letter.
But sadly nothing was ever done to address the problem.
