Vaishali Metro entry a herculean task

GHAZIABAD: Unrestrained encroachment welcomes daily commuters at the Vaishali Metro station's entrance. This squatter menace has been ruining the congenial aspect of Metro rides, for a while now.
The station's mouth is impinged by hawkers and peddlers, who make a living by selling CDs, snacks, trinkets, wallets, purses and bottled water. Auto drivers blithely enter the atriums on the ground and second floors, trying to fleece unsuspecting commuters for short-distance rides.
Being the terminal point of the Dwarka-Vaishali line, the station is constantly buzzing. The state of civic apathy continues despite authorities in Ghaziabad promising to undertake anti-encroachment drives from time to time.
"We have asked the authorities time and again to fix a system whereby auto drivers are queued up in an orderly manner outside the station, to pick up passengers only when their turn comes. But the moment you step aside, you are surrounded by dozens of drivers, each fighting with the other to pick you up. There are security threats too, with just about anyone entering the station in the garb of an auto driver," K C Pant, president, All Vaishali RWAs Federation, said.
Even the foot-overbridge (FOB) that links the second floor of the station to the other side of the Anand Vihar-Mohan Nagar Link Road, is infiltrated by auto drivers.
The other side of the FOB is in a mess, created by parked autos and numerous unauthorized food stalls. The waste they generate is dumped into the Vaishali drain behind, clogging it. On several occasions, passengers freely cross over to the other side of the road with the barricades on the central verge having been broken at places this, despite the FOB.
At other times, vehicles are seen driving in the wrong direction after dropping or picking passengers at the station. The mess is made worse by rickshaw pullers who also choke the station's entrance.
Commuters allege that these activities are going on with the connivance of civic authorities. Local residents, including a social organization by the name of Vaishali Bachao Manch, had in the past, asked authorities to book encroachers with FIRs.
"We had conducted a drive to remove squatters at Vaishali Metro station two weeks ago. A field visit is scheduled by a team of officials to Vaishali as well as the Kaushambi Metro stations on Thursday. A fresh anti-encroachment drive will also be undertaken if necessary," additional municipal commissioner D K Sinha said.