Mumbai: In an unprecedented move, the Army will construct a new foot overbridge at the Elphinstone Road railway station — which witnessed a stampede on September 29 — within the next three months.
This comes as a huge respite to commuters, as the Railways would have taken at least two years to construct the bridge due to procedural formalities. The Army’s deadline for building the bridge is January 31, 2018, while the Railways is concurrently building another FOB at the station, which will be ready in a year.
On why the Army was roped in, sources said that the time taken for Railways to build the same FOB would have been far too long, and it lacked the proficiency of the Army, Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and General Reserve Engineer Force (GREF), which have strong operational expertise in road and bridge construction.
Stating that the Army is bringing in engineers who are used to working on a short notice and that too in extreme weather, an Army official said, “The engineers are told to build bridges that are strong enough to carry artillery and bear the load of tanks when we are engaged with the enemy.”
Army involvement kept under wraps till now
Railways, in a statement, said the help provided by the Army during the Mumbai-Goa highway bridge collapse in August 2016 was commendable, and that the Army had jumped into action to restore and repair roads damaged in over 1,000 places when the 2014 Jammu & Kashmir flash floods took place.
The statement also mentioned the time when the Army stepped in and rebuilt in record time a bridge that had suddenly crashed near Nehru stadium ahead of the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Stating that the Army is bringing in engineers who are used to working on a short notice and that too in extreme weather, an Army official said, “The railways in Mumbai deals with intense pressure of commuters and, as explained to us by officials, they have only four hours every day to work with. In fact, we can do it before the January 31.” The Army has been conducting its own inspections in secret for the past four weeks, in order to gauge the nature of its work.
“We were told to keep the Army’s involvement under wraps, which is why all inspections were done at night,” said an official.
