Within days of the Central Railway (CR) renaming the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, the Western Railway (WR) on 5 July Wednesday rechristened the Elphinstone Road station as Prabhadevi.
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. It will take almost a week to complete all the formalities of changing the name.Ravinder Bhakar, Chief Public Relations Officer of WR
The WR said the code initials of the renamed station would be ‘PBHD’.
It was Shiv Sena which had first made the demand to rename some suburban stations in Mumbai arguing they carried "colonial" names.
In December 2016, the Maharashtra legislature had approved a Bill to rename the Elphinstone Road station, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) and the Mumbai airport.
Welcoming the renaming of the station, Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant told PTI, "It's 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.
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