Rly unions oppose redevelopment of 144-yr-old Parel workshop

The Central Railway Mazdoor Sangh (CRMS), along with other railway staff, has started staging hunger strikes to protest against the construction of the Parel terminus as, according to them, it will further congest the city and destabilise the Central Railway

Mumbai: The process of vacating the 144-year-old Parel workshop to build the Parel train terminus has been set in motion, spurring railway unions to send a memorandum to the administration, opposing the need to clear one of the oldest railway workshops in Mumbai. The move could also lead to chopping of 1000-odd trees, some of them are centuries old.

Mumbai, India – July 19, 2023: A view of Central Railway Parel Workshop, at Parel, in Mumbai, India, on Wednesday, July 19, 2023. (Photo by Bhushan Koyande/HT Photo)

The Central Railway Mazdoor Sangh (CRMS), along with other railway staff, has started staging hunger strikes to protest against the construction of the Parel terminus as, according to them, it will further congest the city and destabilise the Central Railway. The plans for closing the Parel workshop, where the new terminus will come up at a cost of over ₹700 crore, are in place.

“There are so many trees inside the workshop as well as in the premises. Such a large green cover will be lost. Moreover, where is the need for a terminus at Parel when there are terminals at Dadar, LTT and CSMT?” questioned Amit Bhatnagar, senior union leader of CRMS.

The memorandum submitted on July 17 by the railway unions states, “There are more than 800 fully grown trees, of which many are more than a century old, on the premises of the Parel workshop, and another 200 in the staff colony in Parel that will be chopped for creation of this terminus. The passenger terminal will exponentially multiply the already heavy traffic (coming from the Dadar TT, Lalbaug and Prabhadevi side) on Dr B A Road and will only add to the woes of road traffic in the city.”

Sources defending the decision said that Mumbai CSMT was saturated and the LTT station was out of the way for passengers on the western suburbs. This year’s budget had allocated funds of ₹193 crore for the Parel terminus project.

The unions claimed that the administration had proposed to shift the 2,000 employees to other workshops in different parts of the state like Badnera, Latur and the Konkan region. CR officials, however, claimed that there were no such plans. “The Parel workshop will continue to function as always,” said Dr Shivraj Manaspure, chief PRO, Central Railway.

The unions also claimed that the railway administration had plans to commercially exploit the 45 acres of rail land. “What we understand is that there are plans to build high-rise commercial structures apart from the terminus and platforms,” said Praveen Bajpai, another railway union leader. ”As per our calculations, we expect the cost of this workshop to be more than ₹1,100 crore, which we have mentioned in our memorandum.”

The Parel workshop was set up in 1879 as a steam locomotive shed. The periodic overhauling (POH) of diesel locomotives began here in 1974 and the POH of 140-tonne accident relief cranes from 1997. At present, maintenance work on locomotives takes place at the workshop. The latter has a large ground where Ganesh idols are made before the Ganpati festival every year, and there are also railway residential quarters here.