Akhil Vaani | New Delhi Station Stampede Calls For Measures To Make Railways Ready For Traffic Surge

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Last Updated:February 16, 2025, 18:14 IST

New Delhi has not only become the busiest station in the country, but also the one which accounts for the highest passenger income. But in more than two decades, Indian Railways has not been able to get the New Delhi station modernisation story right

A stampede-like situation took place at New Delhi railway station on Saturday. (PTI)

Bharat is increasingly getting mobile, but so are accidental deaths of passengers/travellers. Of the three modes of transport, road accounts for 87%, rail 10% and air 3% of passenger travel, respectively.

While there exists a question mark on the safety of passengers travelling by all three modes of transport in India, those prone to the most accidental deaths are road travellers. However, the accidents which get maximum coverage as news items are rail accident deaths.

A Tale of Two Accidents

On 16 February 2025, the morning edition of most Indian newspapers carried two related stories of accidental deaths. Here is the story –

First, Road Accident Kills Ten: In the first accident, ten people were killed on a highway in the state of Uttar Pradesh. They died after the head-on collision of the Balero car in which they were travelling with a bus. Mercifully the bus passengers had a miraculous save.

The above-mentioned story was relegated as a passing reference on the inside pages of newspapers. It was unsurprising because road accidents have assumed such monstrous propositions in Bharat that these are no longer newspaper headline items – “only in 2023, a total of over 178,000 Bhartiyas died in road accidents that amount to nearly 475 daily deaths".

Two, New Delhi Railway Station Stampede Kills Eighteen: Around 9.45 p.m. on 15 February, a stampede on platforms 14 and 16 of New Delhi station killed at least 18 people and injured nearly a dozen. Ever since the unfortunate accident happened, it has been a breaking news story on 24×7 TV channels, is the front-page story in all leading dailies and the news has been carried by all the prominent news channels of the world.

Rituals Completed

As happens after every railway accident, the Prime Minister, Railway Minister and others from the ruling dispensation have condoled the deaths. And true to its salt, the opposition parties have put their guns on the heads of the government, blaming it for the accident. Another ritual of Indian Railways announcing a high-level committee to inquire has been completed.

Indian Railways have also completed another ritual of announcing compensation of Rs. 10 lakh to the next of kin of the dead, Rs. 2.5 lakh to the seriously injured and Rs. 1 lakh to those with minor injuries.

Case Closed

With the above rituals completed, the New Delhi station stampede case will stand closed. As it is, there are murmurs of victims being blamed for their death, blocking the staircase, crowding near escalators and platforms, people running and falling over each other – the horrifying scenes at the New Delhi Railway Station on Saturday night.

Instead of doing a post-mortem of an avoidable accident that has already happened, this piece focuses on what needs to be done to avoid a repeat of such accidents.

But before talking of solutions, I must portray New Delhi railway station in its correct perspective.

Busiest

As per official figures of Indian Railways, in 2023-24 New Delhi station was the busiest station in the Indian railway system, accounting for more than Rs 3,337 crore revenue from 39,362,272 passengers . New Delhi was followed by Howrah with over Rs 1,692 crore earning, as per the Railways.

It is pertinent to note here that the New Delhi station accounts for roughly 5% of the total revenue from passenger operations in the country.

Lack of Capacity

New Delhi railway station first opened in 1955; as regards its carrying capacity, it reached saturation by 2000 with a daily load of 500,000 passengers. Though the station now has 16 platforms and two side entry and exits, the carrying capacity has hardly increased while both the number of trains and passengers is growing manifold.

Unprepared for Surge Traffic

Though the traffic related to the Maha Kumbh may be unprecedented, the seasonal surge traffic, particularly during the festival and holiday season, is not. Nonetheless, the approach so far of Indian Railways to handling surge traffic (in crunch times, New Delhi Railway station traffic is between 7-8 lakh daily) remains rudimentary.

Here are some war-tested ways to manage surge traffic at a railway station:

Optimising platform capacity
Managing passenger flow with clear signage and barriers
Technology-based solutions
Deploying sufficient staff
Coordinating train schedules
Implementing crowd control measures
Emergency preparedness
Upgrading infrastructure to accommodate higher passenger volumes

And all the above needs to be done all while prioritising passenger safety and efficient movement through the station.

Stalled Modernisation

An accident is an accident is an accident. Nonetheless, I have no compunction in saying that an accident of this type would not have happened had the modernisation of New Delhi station not been stalled for two decades. The ambitious plan for the modernisation of New Delhi railway station was conceived around the same time as that of the modernisation of Delhi airport, and the world-class station developed on PPP was supposed to be ready well before the Commonwealth Games.

Touted as the marque project, for which a feasibility report and concept plan was initiated in 2007, it remained a pipe dream due to heavy opposition from the civic authorities. A world-class designer, Farrells, that had designed Beijing South and Guangzhou South Railway stations completed the station design 2007-2009 of New Delhi Station.

Farrells redesigned the station to increase capacity and flexibility, facilitate inter-modal transfer, and improve station amenity and sustainability. Its roof was designed to achieve passive cooling and reduce the need for artificial lighting. At the macro scale, the station was envisaged as the catalyst for a new urban quarter in the heart of the national capital. A master plan, sympathetic to the historic layout of New Delhi, was conceived to capitalise on the vast amount of space above the railway alignment. It was to allow for new topside development, green space, and to reconnect communities on either side of the tracks.

But it did not happen. The plan was jinxed. Here is the story:

Third Time Unlucky

First failed tender: 2008: The first RFQ process was cancelled because there was confusion over the interpretation of the cross-ownership clause in the document. In the first half of 2008, the IR had received 13 bids for the project. The estimated project cost then was Rs 9,000 crore, which included mandatory capital expenditure, the real estate development for commercial purposes and interest during construction. The developer was supposed to enter into a long-term concession agreement of about 45 years with the IR.

Second Failed Tender: 2009: In November 2009, IR decided to wind up the RFQ process to start work on modernising the New Delhi railway station on a PPP basis. By this time, the estimated project cost had increased to Rs. 12,000 crore. The bid was cancelled as Indian Railways (IR) needed many approvals from DDA and civic authorities despite that many bidders had submitted bids.

Consortiums that submitted bids included Tata Realty and Infrastructure and Grandi Stazioni SpA (Italy); L&T Transco; DB Realty and Deutsche Bahn (German Railways); Nishok Realty, Spanish Railway, Posmar Inversions, Yoman Infrastructure, Parnesh Real Estate; Morgan Stanley Infrastructure and VNR Rail Infrastructure; KMC Construction, China Railway 18th Bureau Group; GVK Developmental Projects, Leighton.

Third Time Unlucky: After two unsuccessful attempts, Railways finally succeeded in getting the flagship initiative of the redevelopment plan of New Delhi station on track after the Union Cabinet approved the project in 2022. This project, a scaled-down version of the earlier project, involved replacing the existing structure with a twin-tower dome-shaped station.

However, the tender was discharged in May 2023 as L&T, the lowest bidder for the project, quoted over Rs 8,000 crore against the government’s estimated price of around Rs 5,000 crore.

Fourth Attempt Fails

After successive failed attempts to modernise New Delhi stations through PPP, finally, IR reduced the ambition regarding the scale of the modernisation as well as the pathway to it- from PPP mode to EPC mode.

After substantially reducing the scope of work, the RLDA issued a fresh tender in its fourth attempt for the much-awaited redevelopment of the New Delhi Railway Station at an estimated cost of Rs 4,700 crore in July 2023. It was also withdrawn in February 2024, leading the RLDA to fragment the project into smaller tenders to attract a wider range of bidders.

Passengers Surging, Station Modernisation Still Taking Baby Steps

When the IR first visualised the modernisation of New Delhi railway station, Howrah and Sealdah were the busiest stations. Back to circa 2025, New Delhi has not only become the busiest station in the country, but also the one which accounts for the highest passenger income. But in more than two decades, IR has not been able to get the New Delhi station modernisation story right.