Secunderabad station’s heritage building razed down

Hyderabad: The Secunderabad railway station’s old heritage building has been razed down to pave the way for a new modern or swanky station.

Photos of the demolition by the South Central Railway (SCR) are doing rounds on social media evoking a sense of loss and nostalgia for many in the city.

Although the pink-cream structure that was demolished was not the station’s original building, it was constructed in the 1950s and had long served as one of the main stations in Hyderabad. The demolition is part of the railway’s project to modernize older stations in India.

The Secunderabad railway station in Hyderabad was originally built in the 1870s during the reign of the sixth Nizam Mir Mahboob Ali Khan (1869-1911).

The plan was to construct a project envisaged under the fifth Nizam Afzal-ud-Daula (1857-69) by the British urging the then Hyderabad state government to set up the Nizams Guaranteed Railways.

The Wadi-Secunderabad railway line was the first ever one that was built by the British and the Nizams. Eventually, the Kachiguda and Nampally stations were built and became an important part of Hyderabad’s transportation system.

The South Central Railway (SCR) demolished the main terminal building of the Secunderabad Railway Station as part of its Rs 720 crore redevelopment project.

It plans to modernise the station into a world-class transit hub and to tackle long-standing infrastructure issues to better passenger facilities as well.

The Secunderabad railway station is also classified as a Non-Suburban Grade 1 (NSG1) station and has a daily footfall of 1.5 lakh passengers and about 180 trains.

An activist who did not want to be named said that the building should not have been demolished.

“The historic building was functional. The railways could have kept it. This kind of development is not good for our heritage,” he decried.