State okays renaming of Sawantwadi station after Konkan Rly’s architect Madhu Dandavate

Chaitanya.Marpakwar

Mumbai: The state cabinet on Tuesday approved the renaming of Sawantwadi railway station after Konkan Railway’s architect, the (late) former Union railway and finance minister Madhu Dandavate. Officials said that after the Centre’s approval, the station will be named ‘Lokmanya Madhu Dandavate Railway Terminus’.

A senior cabinet minister said, “Madhu Dandavate is called the architect of the Konkan Railway. He made significant contributions to the realization of the Konkan railway project and consistently followed up on the Konkan’s railway issues. The people of Konkan feel that the railway was started due to his vision, and there has been a demand for the last few years that Sawantwadi railway station, an important one on the Konkan Railway route, should be named after him.”

Officials said that taking note of this public sentiment, the cabinet has approved the renaming. “Approval was given to submit a proposal to the Union home and railway ministries regarding this,” officials said.

Dandavate was a physicist and a socialist politician who served as minister of railways in the Morarji Desai govt and as minister of finance in the V P Singh govt. Born in Ahmednagar in 1924, he was employed as a physicist before he entered the Quit India Movement in 1942. He served as MP for five terms from Rajapur in the Konkan from 1971 to 1991. As an opposition politician, Dandavate was jailed during the Emergency. He died in 2005.

A senior official said, “Serving as railway minister from 1977 to 1979, he initiated a number of improvements, most notably providing more comfortable and cushioned seats to second-class passengers, a measure that helped millions of people. While initially implemented on the major trunk lines, all trains had these padded berths in their second-class compartments by the end of the 1980s. Dandavate also initiated computerization of railway reservations, which reduced corruption among booking clerks and uncertainty among passengers; sanctioning of the first phase of Konkan Railway in 1978–79, with a line from Apta to Roha; and the repair or replacement of 5,000 kilometres of worn-out tracks.”