Planning to reconstruct 162-year-old station, Railways issues notices to private offices to vacate premises

Northern Railway’s Ferozepur division has issued notices to different government departments operating from the Amritsar railway station to vacate their premises.

The notices to vacate the premises were issued to a branch of the State Bank of India (SPBI), Refreshment Room (RR) and other buildings functioning at the railway station.

Insiders said the major challenge for the Railways is to get its over 80 shops vacated situated outside the railway station to pave the way for overall development on modern lines.

Sources in the railways said several shops were allotted in 1981 and to get them vacated from occupants, the Railways went to the court in 1995-1996.

Notices stated that “codal life of building allotted to you has expired so you hereby informed to vacate the building immediately”. To the branch manager of the SBI, it added that “keeping in view the safety of man/material, vacate the said building at the earliest. Consider it as most urgent”.

Sources in the railway stated that the codal life of a building is the maximum service life of a building after which it should be replaced. The codal life of a building can vary depending on the materials used in its construction and other factors.

It is believed that the entire exercise was aimed at the railway all set to reconstruct the 162-year-old railway station under the ambitious Amrit Bharat Station scheme with a proposed investment running in hundreds of crores.

Set up by the then British Indian government, some years ago upon consulting the old records of the Railways, its officials found that the railway station was built in four years from 1859 to 1862. However, the original building was demolished long ago to pave way for more platforms. Keeping in view the city’s heritage, the present building of the local railway station reflected Sikh architecture.

Amrit Bharat Station scheme envisages development of the local railway station on a continuous basis with a long term approach. It envisages raising of a glass building reminding onlookers of entering an airport instead of railway station, similar to shopping mall experience waiting area equipped with outlets of national and international food chains to be shifted to first floor, waiting halls with modern facilities, odour-free hygienic rail tracks with underground disposal network system, modern toilets, cleaning facilities, kiosks for local products under the “One station One Product” initiative, spaces for business meetings.

A total of 30 railway stations of Punjab are being upgraded in two phases and the Amritsar railway station is one of them.