Piyush Goyal makes FOBs a matter of 'safety', not just 'amenity'

MUMBAI/NEW DELHI: Faced with a huge public outcry after the stampede on the Elphinstone Road-Parel station foot over-bridge (FOB) in which the toll rose to 23 on Saturday, railway minister Piyush Goyal said FOBs, earlier considered only a "passenger amenity," would now be "mandatory" as passenger safety items at all stations in the country.

At a meeting of the Railway Board in Mumbai to review safety measures on the suburban railway network, the minister also decided that 13 FOBs in the city will be widened, while 10 new ones will be provided on Western Railway and 20 on Central Railway. All these works will be completed in a year, he said.

"Every commuter of Mumbai suburban (network) is as important as a Rajdhani passenger and should be treated like that," Goyal said.

After it came to light that the widening of the FOB at Elphinstone Road station had been sanctioned in 2015, Goyal said, "To eliminate bureaucracy and delays, I have empowered GMs (general managers) to spend whatever is necessary on safety." Financial and administration powers will be delegated to field units in two weeks to reduce red tape and push delivery, he added.

The minister has fixed a timeline to address safety issues — the GMs shall intimate the financial commissioners (FCs) within a week of sanction of funds for a project, and the FCs shall confirm the same within 15 days. In case of a disagreement, the matter shall be referred to the Railway Board for a final decision, which has to come within the same 15-day period. This move could be significant are most projects are held up because of lack of financial sanction.

In order to enhance the monitoring mechanism, CCTV cameras will be installed in all suburban trains in Mumbai within 15 months and subsequently, across the country. Only compartments for women and for the disabled in the city have CCTV cameras as of now. "Besides, issues pending with other agencies like BMC, MMRDA, CIDCO, state government, etc should be resolved in a week's time," Goyal tweeted.

"We are turning a 150-year-old convention on its head. Hereafter, FOBs will be deemed mandatory," Goyal said.

The railways earlier seemed to have ignored the findings of a CAG report of 2016 which said, "FOB is an important passenger amenity and passenger safety item, provided to facilitate movement of passengers from outside the station to any platform and from one platform to another."

"It is a critical element of crowd management and is prone to stampede. It was observed that FOBs were not strong enough to sustain crowd pressure at 25 stations of seven zonal railways," the auditor had said.

The ministry has now also sanctioned additional escalators at Mumbai's suburban stations with high footfalls. Details of the project would be finalized within 15 days. "61 new escalators will be planned on CR and 31 on WR," Goyal said. A similar exercise would be carried out at all the "high-use" stations of the country subsequently, the railway ministry added.

In addition to this, Goyal sanctioned work for 15-car services on the slow corridor on WR.

The minister has ordered 200 officers to be relocated from the railway headquarters for field work to strengthen ground operations and project implementation. Also, "brilliant and enthusiastic" station directors will be posted at 75 stations across India to bring dynamism into railway operations.

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Hours after the stampede, Suresh Prabhu, who was railway minister till less than a month ago and now holds the commerce and industry portfolio in the Modi cabinet, took the highly unusual step (reported in TOI yesterday) of publicly blaming the very administration he had headed for its "lackadaisical and negligent" approach in not following up on his Rs 12 crore sanction in April 2015 for a wider foot over-bridge at Elphinstone Road station. Prabhu said the file was "ignored" and tenders were not called. Had the contract been awarded for construction, "the tragedy would have been avoided and 22 people would not have lost their lives for no reason", he said.

All of this begs the following questions. If negligence caused these deaths, as a serving Union cabinet minister says it has, will criminal prosecution be instituted against the officials responsible? If the government doesn't, will the families of victims approach the courts? Prabhu was railway minister for two and a half years after he sanctioned the FOB project; wasn't there any follow-up or status report during this time? If not, why not?

A nine-month-old and an eight-year-old lost their mother who on Friday chose to take the train instead of walking, as she usually did; so many other families have been devastated by tragically avoidable deaths of their children and parents. They deserve to know why.