Migrant rats swarm New Delhi railway station

New Delhi Railway Station is seeing a different kind of migrant traffic these days — of the furry kind. Rajat Arora reports.

New Delhi Railway Station is seeing a different kind of migrant traffic these days — of the furry kind.

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According to the Northern Railway, rats are travelling in droves on trains coming from south India and sneaking in from nearby Sadar Bazaar, the Capital’s wholesale hub.

A railway officer said the rodents were definitely not from the station as “all burrows here were cemented before the Commonwealth Games”. In 2009, the Northern Railway signed a Rs 17-lakh contract with a pest control firm and within a year, rats were almost completely eliminated from the station.

With the problem back, and growing, the Railways have hit upon a new plan to control it. Rodent territories are being identified and bromide-coated granules — a repellent — will be put in infested areas. “In trains, housekeeping staff have been trained to flush out rodents. At the station, there is a proposal to tag rats with a chip and track their burrows so we can get rid of the root of the problem. But its feasibility is yet to be tested,” the officer said.

“New Delhi is a world-class station and we can’t afford to have even a single rat in its premises.”