Passengers wait as a train passes the Oodlabari station. Picture by Biplab Basak

Jalpaiguri, Oct. 22: With 28 tea gardens, a military base, Gajaldoba, the main point of the Teesta Barrage and logging stations just a stones’ throw away, Oodlabari, was indispensable as a station in the 60’s.

The last three decades has, however, seen the commercial hub losing much of its glory. With a demographic shift, fuelled by the promise of a good life and better living, a little known town, Siliguri, rose in prominence. And with it coincided Oodlabari’s downhill run.

Having fallen from grace, the erstwhile nucleus now serves only as a flag station. The decision to downgrade the station was taken in 1997.

“Operational strategies”, said Pradip Bhatnagar, Alipurduar divisional railway manager, Northern Frontier Railways, “were at work behind its present status.”

“Most trains chug past the station without stopping, and even though a local, the Changrabandha-Siliguri passenger,does stop, it does so only for fleeting seconds,” said Uttam Chakroborty, a daily passenger to Siliguri. “Ad hoc staff who sell tickets at the station also follow the pattern of trains, rarely making an appearence,” he adds. Their ordeal continues with ticket checkers forcing them to pay fines for ticketless travel.

With a view to turning the administration’s attention to the pitiable condition of the residents, the Oodlabari Unnayan Committee was formed.

“The station is so neglected that there are no time tables for the passengers to know the timings of the train. We need to telephone the Malbazar station to know the status of the trains and whether or not they have been cancelled,” said Anup Saha, joint convener of the committee.

Trains were the first to go, and basic services at the station followed suit soon after said Tapan Das, another member.

“Owing to the dislocation the residents, around one lakh of them, suffered, we formed a forum to protest the decision of the railways,” he added.

“We can only rely on the trains during the monsoon because landslides cut off the roads links to Siliguri,” said Pallab Basu, an Oodlabari resident.

“Though we have lodged a formal complaint to the general manager of the Northern Frontier Railway, they have shown no interest in looking into the matter,” Basu rued.

With their plaintiff cries going unheard, the committee has threatened to resort to more desperate measures.

“We will stage a ‘rail roko, rasta roko’, with the support of residents from all the nine gram panchayats, in the near future,” Saha said.

“It is a movement that will make the administration sit up and take notice. The conversion of the track to broadguage will head our list of demands,” Saha said.