Western Railway’s Elphinstone Road station officially renamed to Prabhadevi

Days after Central Railway renamed the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Western Railway (WR) has rechristened the Elphinstone Road station as Prabhadevi.

The WR issued a notification to this effect on Wednesday.

The station, which was named after Lord Elphinstone, the Governor of Bombay Presidency from 1853 to 1860, has now been renamed in honour of a local deity.

“The notification about the renaming of the station has been issued and steps are being taken to make necessary changes, including updating it in our system,” said the chief public relations officer of the WR, Ravinder Bhakar.

“It will take almost a week to complete all the formalities of changing the name,” he added.

The WR said the code initials of the renamed station would be ‘PBHD’.

Shiv Sena was the first party to demand that suburban stations with ‘colonial’ names in Mumbai be renamed. In December last year, the Maharashtra legislature had approved a Bill to rename the Elphinstone Road station, CST and Mumbai airport.

Welcoming the renaming of the station, Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant told PTI, “Its good that our demands are being accepted. But we will still pursue this issue (of renaming more stations) with the state government and the Railway Ministry.”

“I have demanded that several suburban stations need to be renamed as a mark of respect to the local luminaries. I have demanded that Currey Road station be named as Lalbaugh, Sandhurst Road station as Dongri, Reay Road as Ghodapdeo, Cotton Green as Kalachowki, Mumbai Central as Nana Chowk, Grant Road as Gaondevi, etc. I am confident that our demands will be met for the larger public interest,” Sawant added.

Sena’s demand had received the support of all the major parties of the state. The Maharashtra Assembly had unanimously passed a resolution to this effect last year.

The BJP-led government had sought insertion of the word ‘Maharaj’ in both the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. The Centre had given its nod to the recommendations of the state government in May this year.

Last week, Mumbai’s iconic railway station, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus was rechristened with addition of an honorific Maharaj after Shivaji in its old name.

The British-era landmark, which was Victoria Terminus before it was named after the Maratha warrior king a couple of decades back, is now known as ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus’.

With PTI inputs