Mumbai: A dangerous building along the tracks at Sandhurst Road was almost razed on Sunday but this only highlights the larger problem of dilapidated structures along this one-km stretch between Masjid Bunder and Sandhurst Road.
They look so rickety that they could fall any day. Some even have trees growing out of their walls, an eloquent testimony to their lack of maintenance. Worse, several of them have illegal alterations such as cantilevered balconies, which put additional pressure on the structures. And these buildings literally loom over the tracks. Were any one of these to fall, the passing train would be buried under the rubble.
Such a mishap had happened in the mid-eighties when the Akash Deep building along the tracks at Marine Lines collapsed. Fortunately, a local train had just passed by. However, no lessons seem to have been learnt from that narrow escape. The railways ignore the danger and for the civic officials it is business as usual. No party treats it as an urgent case.
Five years ago, though, the railways did build a 300-metre concrete retaining wall on this section. However, that is just like a band aid for a gaping wound.
An alarm was raised about Thorat Mansion, the building that was demolished on Sunday, only after its retaining wall collapsed on Friday, exposing the foundation and spilling debris on to the tracks.
Here, too, civic officials tried to pass the buck. They sent a letter to the Central Railway on Friday warning them that they would be `solely responsible’ for any mishap in case the two-storey Thorat Mansion collapsed. Central Railway GM S K Sood shot back, threatening to stop services between CST and Byculla if the building was not demolished.
It is not as if the railways and the BMC have not been warned about the danger from such buildings. On October 2 last year, the FPJ carried a story on this very issue in the aftermath of the Babu Genu market building at Dockyard Road.
Civic activist Suleiman Bhimani was quoted in the news report saying that a cluster of buildings at and near 25B Keshavji Naik Road had unauthorised cantilevered construction on the top floor and illegal extension and additions and alterations at ground floor level.
He had also written to the railway and civic officials that the stone wall supporting the slope on the side of Sandhurst Road station was cracked and in danger of collapse. “This may result in a landslide on the tracks,” he had warned. Bhimani had backed up his letters with photographs.
When FPJ took up the issue with Central Railway, its public relations officer Atul Rane had said, “These structures exist beside the track and the BMC has not declared them as dangerous. If we are told by an authority that yes these are indeed in danger of falling on the tracks then we will definitely look into it.”
Hopefully, the civic and railway authorities will do that now.
Anil Singh
