It came up less than seven years ago to de-congest the more important and busier railway stations in Delhi, but Anand Vihar railway station has left the much older stations far behind when it comes to cleanliness.
The Railway Ministry has announced the results of a cleanliness survey of railway stations it had commissioned and Anand Vihar has come out with flying colours.
It is the only railway station in the Delhi-NCR that is among the top 20 in the country among A1 category stations. With a rank of 17, it is far ahead of New Delhi railway station (55), Delhi Junction (64) and Hazrat Nizamuddin (72).
The survey, conducted by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), divided railway stations across the country into A1 (annual revenue of over Rs.50 crore) and A (annual revenue between Rs. 6 crore and Rs.50 crore) categories.
While the first category has 75 stations, 323 stations are part of the second category. The survey is based largely on passenger feedback, where they were asked to rate various cleanliness parameters.
Originally just a small halt station, Anand Vihar became a terminal in December 2009 and over the years many east-bound trains have started operating from here.
Spread over 42 acres, the station has seven platforms and caters to nearly one lakh passengers daily. The station will go through another major revamp and modernisation as part of its phase II development.
“The comparatively lower footfall definitely helps, but other factors responsible for keeping it clean include the material used to build it. For instance, the granite surface doesn’t retain dirt and is easier to clean,” said a senior Railway official.
“Also, the platforms are much wider since it is a newer station and there were no space constraints that are a problem at the much older stations like Delhi Junction and New Delhi. Since most trains originate here and there are fewer ‘through trains’, the waiting period of passengers on platforms is less and so are the chances of the station getting dirty,” he added.
While even Anand Vihar railway station at Level 2 doesn’t match the highest level of cleanliness, New Delhi railway station has Level 3 cleanliness and Delhi Junction and Hazrat Nizamuddin railway stations have achieved Level 4.
On the other hand, Delhi’s Shahdara railway station (308) and Ghaziabad railway stations (311) are among the dirtiest in the country, with their ranking scraping the bottom of the list. “Ghaziabad is one of the oldest stations in Delhi-NCR and sees a lot of freight and passenger train traffic. Encroachments outside the station also adds to the lack of cleanliness,” the official said.
“Anand Vihar is newly-constructed and with the arrangements in place along with cooperation from passengers it remains very clean. The survey takes a comparative position and other stations too have witnessed a lot of improvement,” said Northern Railway CPRO Neeraj Sharma.
“We are putting in the best measures to ensure cleanliness at all our stations but we need cooperation from passengers also,” he said.
