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Delhi’s Ring Railway network, with 21 stations, ferried passengers in a circular route starting and ending at the Hazrat Nizamuddin railway station since the late 1970’s, until the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown in early 2020. The network’s revival could decrease the passenger traffic on Delhi’s metro and bus networks but it would need additional railway lines and a solution for the illegal encroachments on railway land at many of the railway stations such as Daya Basti.
“There are many arterial railway routes going out of Delhi and there is a circular route that connects all these routes which is known as the Ring Railway. We call it the Delhi Avoiding Line (DAL) in the railway parlance which means that it is used to avoid Delhi like a road bypass around any major city and mirrors Delhi’s Ring Road,” Pushpesh Raman Tripathi, divisional railway manager (DRM), Delhi Division, Northern Railway, told Down To Earth.
“The railway passenger volume in and around Delhi is so high that without an alternative route via the DAL we will not be able to fulfil the requirements of freight movement in the larger region around Delhi and even far off places,” he added. Around 549 passenger trains pass via or stop at Delhi every day, while the number of freight trains is 210, according to data provided to DTE by the DRM’s office.
This freight movement is absolutely crucial for transporting commodities such as coal, agricultural produce and manufactured products from the regions northwest, northeast and south of Delhi.
The major coal- and mineral-producing areas are located in the eastern parts of the country and a few coal-based power plants are located in Punjab and Haryana, such as the powerhouses in Panipat, Bhatinda, Suratgarh, Charkhi Dadri and Jhajjar. The areas to the northwest of Delhi are also major rice and wheat producing regions.
Some of the export hubs are present to the east of Delhi and have their catchment in Meerut, where the railways have many international container depots. Many goods are also transported from and towards the ports on the western coast via Delhi.
For the transportation of goods, the DAL or the ring railway is essential and was built for that purpose by the British government around the 1920’s, through mostly forested terrain at the time, according to Tripathi. “We are currently running the freight trains at 131 per cent capacity of our network and these trains cannot be relayed from railway platforms as that would hinder the passenger traffic,” said Tripathi.
“We can put in four more lines on this network because we have the need for that, but we are not able to do that because of socioeconomic reasons that prevent us from interfering. We definitely want to expand our lines for freight trains but they can also be used for passenger traffic on the ring railway network,” said Tripathi.
The main problem in the construction of new lines is the encroachment of railway land at many of the stations such as Daya Basti and Shakur Basti. Daya Basti station lies on the ring railway network and connects to the Rohtak and Palwal railway lines; Shakur Basti lies on the Rohtak line outside the ring railway.
Out of the total land area of 12,134 hectares under the Delhi division of the Northern Railways less than half (5,901 ha) is being used at present.
“Currently we are not contemplating the ring railway for local passengers as we have constraints of resources and ongoing projects,” said Tripathi.
Down To Earth (DTE) visited the Daya Basti and found large parts of railway land encroached upon by people who have been living there for decades, with the main doors of some houses opening onto the railway platform.
Gauri Shankar Prajapati has been living in Delhi for 35 years and runs a small shop right next to the fence of platform number 2 of Daya Basti railway station. “People have been living next to the railway station for 35-40 years. There are around 35,000-40,000 people staying here currently,” Prajapati told DTE. These people are living in squalid quarters with a big dump of garbage nearby.
“The only facility we get here is private electricity. For water, we have to travel a kilometre. Public toilets are also similar distances away, which is challenging for women,” said Prajapati.
People living in the area also use the railway line to travel to their villages and to the New Delhi railway station, according to Prajapati.
The railway protection force personnel stationed at the station highlighted another major problem of passenger security. The crime rate in the area is quite high which discourages people to use the railway’s services as much as they would want to and the railway protection force is understaffed to handle the safety of passengers.
At the Sardar Patel Marg railway station, which also falls on the ring railway network, the platforms lie in a dilapidated condition, though the railway tracks are in good shape and still being used for freight trains.
DTE observed at least four freight trains passing by the platforms in a couple of hours. The station is right in front of the Taj Palace hotel. But the main entrance, which is just a staircase near a traffic police booth, can be easily missed. It bears a lone, rusted board showing the schedule of the ring railway passenger trains.
The platforms were last used when the COVID-19 pandemic started in early 2020 and would require quite a bit of resources to be up and running. Many other stations along the ring railway also lay in a similar condition, waiting for passengers.
This article is part of our series on how India moves, which looks at the relationship between air quality and human mobility in cities and towns.