Railways struggle to keep FOBs hawker-free

Mumbai: The Railways has said it made suburban stations hawker-free after the September 29 stampede at the Parel-Elphinstone Road station foot overbridge (FOB), but it is still trying to figure out how to keep FOBs free of hawkers in the long run. Twenty-three people lost their lives in the stampede.

Officials said that around 550 home guards would be deployed on Western Railway (WR) by the end of December while the Central Railway (CR) would be getting 250 from the Maharashtra Security Force (MSF). But there is still no long-term solution to the hawking problem.

According to a 2009 Supreme Court order, hawking is not allowed in a periphery of 150 metres from a railway station.

After the Elphinstone Road station tragedy, the railway went on a anti-hawking drive.

An official said, “It has been a little over a month after the tragedy occurred and right now it is fresh in the minds of people but we feel once this outrage dies down we will begin to feel a lot of political pressure to allow them back onto railway land.”

He added, “Also, as far as the long term is concerned, there is actually no plan for the hawkers as of now. The situation will be dealt with on a day-to-day basis.”

A big plus for the railway authorities will be the beefed-up presence of security personnel beginning from late January to early February next year. Officials said that they hope that the increased manpower will help them in keeping the pressure against hawkers on.”

He added, “The challenge will be how we use this new manpower as it will be responsible primarily for crowd management and will have to keep a tab on the hawkers simultaneously.”

CR senior divisional security commissioner Sachin Bhalode said, “We are going to make optimum use of the additional personnel for the security of theMumbaikar.” According to Railways, hawkers have a presence on almost all the 72 CR stations and 36 WR stations.