Laughter and tears go together. That truism was reaffirmed yet again with the double irony inherent in Tuesday’s tragedy on the Santragachi station overbridge, close to Howrah. The rejoicing at the Red Road carnival of Durga images was silenced with news of the stampede that killed two passengers and injured 14 others.
It bears recall that on 31 March 2012, five passengers were mowed down by a train, also at Santragachi, while crossing the track. In their anxiety to reach the platform post-haste, they had chosen not to use the overbridge. This time around, the stampede has occurred on the overbridge, and the gruesome accident lengthens the loop of such tragedies when we recall the deaths of no fewer than 22 people in a stampede on the footbridge at Mumbai station on 29 September 2017.
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This is not to forget the deaths of 61 Dussehra enthusiasts who were mowed down by a speeding train while watching the burning of a Ravana effigy near Amritsar last Friday. Central to the stampede is the fact that the movement of trains at Santragachi ran counter to the fundamentals of Railway operations. This is the core issue that any enquiry ought to address, though fears that the findings may get docketed are not wholly unfounded.
It thus comes about that the Nagercoil-Shalimar Express and two EMU locals had trundled into Santragachi station at the same time ~ 6.30 pm ~ and this sparked a scramble towards the platforms to board the trains. It is hard not to wonder whether the signalling system wasn’t suitably effective to alert the trains and also, of course, the commuters.
Prima facie, it is pretty obvious that there was little or no coordination in the movement of the three incoming trains during the evening peak hour. Reports suggest that a belated announcement afforded passengers little time to reach the appropriate platforms. Besides, the Shalimar-Vishakhapatnam Express and the Santragachi-Chennai Express were also scheduled to arrive at about the same time. The disaster would have been horrendous had five trains been involved.
Viewed through the prism of safety and security, and considering the volume of passenger traffic at Santragachi, a wider overbridge is imperative. The budgetary allocation on this count must of necessity be suitably utilised. Not wholly unrelated is the need for an underpass to facilitate the movement of passengers. In a word, Santragachi station cries out for a better deal from the South Eastern Railway.
Both the movement of passengers and railway traffic at Santragachi need to be streamlined. Mamata Banerjee might have been off the mark when she blamed Metro construction for the collapse of the Majerhat bridge; on Tuesday the Chief Minister ~ incidentally a former Railway minister ~ hit the bull’s eye when she underlined the failure of coordinated train movement.
