Mumbai: Dadar is the only railway station in Mumbai that has no authorised water connection. This, as per the sources, is due to an ongoing dispute between the Western Railway and the BMC. The tussle between the BMC and the Western Railway has led to a strange situation. The Western Railway is asking the BMC to pay Rs 338 crore for way leave charges, and the Western Railway has to pay Rs 22 Lakh to the BMC. The tussle has been going on for 12 years and remains unresolved. As per the sources, due to this, the BMC has not given any new connections to the Western Railway, which needs the connections because of the increase in the capacity of new coaches. Currently, the Western Railway is facing a water shortage of 20 per cent for train operations. Thus, the water is being filled at the next train stops like Surat and Valsad, or wherever the train halts. The dependency on water tankers has increased because the Western Railway did not have enough water connections from the BMC. This has caused more expenditure for the Western Railway. For Dadar terminus, the Western Railway uses 40 water tankers, each water tanker of the capacity of 10,000 litres, which comes down to four lakh litres of water every day. Around eight water tankers of the capacity of 10,000 litres, which comes down to 80,000 litres of water, are required for Dadar station. In total, the Western Railway incurs expenses on 4,80,000 litres of water every day. BMC PRO Tanaji Kamble has denied that there was no water connection at Dadar Railway Station. “Every station has BMC water connection,” he said. Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) of Western Railway Vineet Abhishek said, “All efforts are being taken to ensure there is no inconvenience to our passengers.”
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