Sudipto Mondal and Govind D Belgaumkar/The Hindu 

• Officials at local railway stations are not authorised to approve concessions 
• Railway staff seeking long leave have to go to Palakkad to get the sanction
• Mangalore is said to be highest revenue earner for SWR’s headquarters

Mangalore, Dec 17: To avail most of the concessions in the fares of the Railways, people from Dakshina Kannada district have to travel over 200 kilo metres to the Palakkad Divisional Railway Headquarters of the Southern Railways. They include visually and physically impaired people, cancer and tuberculosis patients, widows of soldiers and students.

This would not have been the situation if Mangalore was made a Divisional Headquarter – for only an officer at the divisional headquarters is authorised to approve the concession claims.

For nearly 40 years, the residents of Padil and surrounding areas in the city, have been demanding that a railway over-bridge be built at the level-crossing there to ensure unhindered flow of traffic. Between 6 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Tuesday, the level-crossing gate was closed 22 times. According to the gate-keeper, these stoppages could sometimes last as long as half-an-hour.

B.M. Madhava, convenor of the Railway Bridge Horata Samithi in Padil, says that each time the residents have to petition a higher official of the railways, they have to travel to Palakkad.

“The local officials have no authority,” he says. Artist Venkataraj Kotur said no railway official bothered even to receive a memorandum from the residents of Padil when they agitated in front of the Mangalore Junction station, recently.

In Pandeshwara, where residents are facing the same problem because of the railway level-crossing, the residents’ agitation ended even before taking off.

“When people came to know that they had to travel to Palakkad just to submit a memorandum, they simply gave up,” Narayan Emmigere (46), STD booth-owner near the level-crossing, said.

Kunhimon (name changed), a leader of the Dakshin Railway Employees Union (DREU), who is employed at the Mangalore Central Railway Station, is required to go to Palakkad merely to apply for a long leave. “Even the smallest employees’ grievance cannot be solved locally,” he said.

When journalists want the slightest information about the railway stations here, including Mangalore Central, Mangalore Junction and Panambur, they discover that the local officials are tight-lipped. Their usual refrain is: “Only the Public Relations Officer in Palakkad and other senior officers are authorised to speak to the media.”

The same holds good for passengers’ grievances but the Public Relations Officer is unavailable to the public.

“We want a divisional railway headquarters in Mangalore for the same reason as one needs at State, district, panchayat and ward-level administrations,” says Mr. Madhava. Pointing out that a bulk of the traffic in the Palakkad division originates in the three stations here, he says: “Nothing explains having headquarters there in Palakkad.”

Calling for decentralisation, he says that the headquarters of a public office that is not accessible is like a “kings palace”, inaccessible to subjects.

An oft-repeated argument for denying Mangalore a divisional status is that it does not have enough facilities and the infrastructure here is poor. But Kunhimon says: “This region does not have facilities because the headquarters is far away. If this is made a nodal centre then infrastructure development will automatically take place.”

Another senior DREU leader said: “The Palakkad Division is holding on to these three railway stations because they are the largest revenue earners.”

Sure enough, officials at the Panambur Railway Station, that exclusively deals in goods traffic, says that the station contributed Rs. 105 crore to the Palakkad Division in 2007-08.

The officials say that the station earns over Rs. 30 lakh a day. Nearly 50 per cent of the revenue of the Palakkad Division came from Panambur alone, after Salem was made a new division.

“If it loses Mangalore too, Palakkad will lose its very existence,” says a senior official at the Mangalore Central Railway Station.

Pointing to the incidents that led to the formation of Salem Division, formerly a part of the Palakkad division, the official says: “What turned the tide in favour of Salem Division was political will.”