Mangaluru: The Mangalore City Central railway station has an ancient drainage system, from which sewage is overflowing next to the front entrance, much to the disgust of passengers.

People walk by stepping on the stinking water that fills the driveway, dragging their luggage trolleys through the smelly water. Passengers alighting from auto rickshaws often step back into the waiting auto rickshaws, after their feet enter puddles of murky water. The same condition prevails at the taxi stand there. The two-wheeler parking area is flooded with the same effluvium. A helpless parking attendant sits gingerly in the midst of ankle-level murky water.

Every time a car or a two-wheeler passes by, he and the passengers near him, get splashed with the drainage water. All the discharge from the toilets at the railway station, comes out of the chambers, which are next to the station restaurant, but business goes on unabated. It is a sad scene for a city which recently got the third position in the clean cities list in India, and definitely does not augur well with a city that is trying to get into the second list of the Smart Cities initiative.

When asked about this issue, railway officials pointed out that there was a bottleneck at a drainage pipeline in the railway property. “The City Corporation has changed the pipeline till the beginning of the railway property. The pipeline passing through the railway property is of a smaller diameter, which is why it gets clogged sometimes. We have already moved the papers for changing the pipeline in our property, and we will commence the work soon,” said Divisional Railway Manager Naresh Lalwani.

Mayor Harinath K told reporters that they have already advised the Railways to undertake this work as early as possible. “We cannot take up the work in their property, they have their own Engineering Division and funding. But as a Mayor of the city, which has taken up the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan on a serious note, I would want the railways to clean up this mess,” said the mayor.