Indian Railways orders compulsory foot overbridges, more escalators at stations

A day after a stampede at Mumbai’s Elphinstone Road railway station killed 23 people, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal called a meeting of the Railway Board to take decisions in a bid to ease passenger congestion at railway stations across the country.

The Indian Railways decided to amend “a 150-year-old convention” to deem construction of foot overbridges mandatory at railway stations, instead of treating it as a “passenger amenity,” Mr. Goyal wrote on Twitter, after holding a top-level meeting in Mumbai on Saturday.

General Managers of all railway zones have been empowered to spend funds on safety and additional escalators will be sanctioned in a phased manner – first at crowded Mumbai suburban stations and later at all high-traffic stations.

“Two hundred officers to be relocated from headquarters as field staff to strengthen ground operations and project implementation. Within the next 15 months, CCTV cameras in all suburban trains in Mumbai with monitoring mechanism. Parallel work across India,” Mr. Goyal wrote.

The Railway Ministry issued a statement in the morning stating the ‘facts on stampede at Mumbai’s railway station.’ “It seems that due to sudden thundershower type rains, a stampede-like situation arose on the north side foot overbridge connecting Elphinstone Road and Parel stations at about 10.30 am, wherein 32 persons have been injured while 22 casualties have been confirmed in this unfortunate incident (till Friday),” it said.