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By:

Minal Sancheti

2 May 2026 at 12:26:53 pm

Tussle between BMC, WR leaves Dadar dry

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,...

Tussle between BMC, WR leaves Dadar dry

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.”

The Celebrity Family

Priya Dutt

‘Will she or won’t she?’ That was the question on the minds of Congress workers and voters until it was announced that Bandra West will not see Priya Dutt as the Congress candidate these elections. But the former MP is seen in public, once again, campaigning for the party’s candidate.


Priya is a two term Member of Parliament from the Mumbai North East constituency and chose to retreat into a sabbatical from politics. It cannot be called retirement because it’s hard to tell when politicians will retire. She contested her first elections in 2005, following the death of her father, Sunil Dutt, who was the incumbent MP at that time and got re-elected in 2009. She lost two subsequent elections and didn’t contest after that.


Priya’s desire to be her father’s successor in public life and work was evident when she accompanied Sunil Dutt on the mahashanti padyatra from Mumbai to Amritsar in 1987 and worked extensively to provide relief to members of the Muslim community during the 1992 riots that set Mumbai afire. Soft-spoken and affable, Bandra-bred Priya holds a post-graduate degree in television production from a New York-based institute. Priya’s debut in politics met with intense media attention given her famous family. Her parents were senior members of the Congress party while her brother Sanjay Dutt is a movie star.


Sunil Dutt, a popular movie star, joined the Congress in 1984 and contested the parliamentary elections. Given his stardom and social work, he won the elections and was elected to the Lok Sabha for five terms until his death at the age of 75. Before his electoral debut, Dutt was appointed as the sheriff of Mumbai which is a titular post. In 1987, when militancy and violence in Punjab was on the boil, Dutt and his daughter Priya undertook a march, the Mahashanti Padyatra from Mumbai to Amritsar to establish communal harmony.


In 2004, he was sworn in as the minister for youth affairs and sports in the Manmohan Singh government but couldn’t hold the position for too long. He passed away in 2005. His wife and movie star Nargis Dutt was also a member of the Congress and the duo is known to have dedicatedly worked with the marginalised sections of society. The popular family faced turmoil in the 1990s when Sanjay Dutt was arrested for possessing banned weapons.

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