Central Railway Announces Restrictions At Stations In Mumbai, Neighbouring Cities To Control Crowd

The Central Railway imposed restrictions on major stations including Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Dadar, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Thane, Kalyan, Pune and Nagpur to ensure smooth movement.

Hours after the stampede at Bandra railway station, the Central Railway on Sunday imposed temporary restrictions on the sale of platform tickets to manage crowding on platforms. 

The Central Railway imposed restrictions on major stations including Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Dadar, Lokmanya Tilak Terminus, Thane, Kalyan, Pune and Nagpur to ensure smooth passenger movement within the stations.

The restriction of the sale of platform tickets is effective immediately until November 8 during the Diwali and Chhath Puja festivals. However, the Railways have exempted Senior Citizens and those with medical needs. 

The Central Railway also announced two unreserved special services between Pune and Danapur during the Diwali and Chhath Festivals.

"We are pleased to announce 2 Unreserved Special services of Pune-Danapur (Train No. 01419/01420) during the Diwali & Chhath Festivals," the Central Railway said in a post on X. 

The move comes as several railway stations in Mumbai and neighbouring cities, including Pune, Nagpur and Thane are seeing huge footfall as people, especially migrant workers are heading towards their native places for the festivals. 

Earlier on Sunday morning, nine people were injured due to chaos and stampede at Western Railway's prominent Bandra Terminus on Sunday morning after a huge crowd tried to board the train heading towards Gorkhapur in Uttar Pradesh.

In another release, CR said it would run two additional unreserved trains between CSMT and Gorakhapur to clear the extra rush of passengers during Diwali and Chhath.This will take the total number of services run or planned for these two festivals to 583, it said. The 01019 unreserved special will depart from CSMT Mumbai at 2:30pm on October 28 and arrive at Gorakhpur at 11pm the next day.

Responsing to the incident, the Western Railway said it is operating more than 130 festival special trains for various destinations, especially to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, in view of the upcoming Diwali and Chhath festivals.  

In another video statement, WR's chief public relations officer Vineet Abhishek said about 2.5 hours before the scheduled departure at 5.10 am, the train was being backed on the platform. "Unfortunately, some passengers tried to board the train while it was moving, because of which they got injured," he said. The WR official said considering the festival season, they have issued a notification for 2,300 trips of special trains from Mumbai Central, Bandra, Valsad, Udhna and other stations on their network.