Indian Railways starts playing Chhath songs at over 100 stations across nation
NEW DELHI: Ahead of Bihar’s Chhath festival, Indian Railways has introduced a unique arrangement of playing popular folk songs dedicated to the Chhath festival at over 100 prominent stations across the country.
In the first phase, this initiative has been implemented at 30 different stations, where announcements of train departures or arrivals pause for a while. During these intervals, folk songs sung by well-known singers such as Sharda Sinha, Nitu Kumari Navgeet, Vindyavasni Devi and others are played when no train information is being broadcast over the automated announcement system.
The Railways has started playing Chhatha songs at more than 30 stations in Bihar, including Patna, Danapur, Hajipur, Bhagalpur, Jamalpur, Sonepur and others. Similar arrangements for playing Chhatha songs have also been made at New Delhi, Ghaziabad and Anand Vihar Terminal, which are now witnessing heavy footfall of passengers travelling to Bihar and other Hindi-speaking states for the festival.
Confirming this to the newspaper, ED (I&P) Dileep Kumar of the Ministry of Railways said on Friday, “Indian Railways has started broadcasting Chhatha songs at railway stations on the auspicious occasion of Chhatha Puja. The aim of this initiative is to connect the passengers with the auspicious spirit of the festival and make their journey more pleasant. This has been launched at almost all those stations that now witness large numbers of Bihar-bound passengers travelling for the Chhatha festival across the country."
Savita Kumari, a passenger travelling from Kolkata to Patna with her family members for the Chhatha festival, said “These devotional songs being played at railway stations during Chhatha Puja surcharge the ambience of station with religious festivity for the devotees, who either remain in wait to take trains or boarding in trains”.
A senior railway official told the newspaper that the Chhatha folk songs being played make passengers feel the fragrance of their home and culture, thereby infusing devotion and joy into their journey even when they remain away from their states.
Begun on Friday, the initiative through the automatic announcement system will continue for several days after the end of Chhatha, covering the period when passengers make their return journeys. Others stations such as Banaras, Gorakhpur and Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh, Kolkata, Burdwan, Durgapur and Asansol in West Bengal, as well as Ludhiana and Amritsar in Punjab, are among the hundreds of stations where this initiative has been introduced.
Currently, Indian Railways is operating more than 12,000 special train trips to manage the surge of passengers travelling from across the country to states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, where the Chhatha festival is celebrated on a large scale.