Mumbai rail situation ‘grim’, said panel in 2012

NEW DELHI: The Elphinstone tragedy was waiting to happen. While another inquiry has been ordered into the incident which killed 22 people, the railways is sitting over recommendations of the Anil Kakodkar committee which warned in its February 2012 report that the “situation is grim” across Mumbai’s suburban system.
The panel said an estimated 15,000 people die on tracks every year because of trespassing.“Of this, 6,000 deaths or 40% of the casualties take place on Mumbai’s suburban rail network,” said the report.
The panel had noted: “We feel the grim situation on Mumbai’s suburban system has to be tackled on a war footing.
Here, trespassing occurs because of lack of barricading, fencing, lack of adequate number of pedestrian overbridges and lack of facilities such as sufficient number of platforms, escalators, elevators for the disabled apart from insufficient train services. These are the main reasons for the heavy human death toll.
“Reluctance of the Railways to own these casualties, which do not fall under the purview of train accidents but are nevertheless accidents on account of trains can by no means be ignored.
No civilised society can accept such massacre on their railway system,” it said. The panel recommended forming a high-level task force involving the state government, zonal passenger body and NGOs to recommend constructive measures.
A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General in 2015 had also focused on railway foot overbridges and called for building more FOBs of prescribed sizes to ensure passenger safety.
The report noted that FOB was 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.