MUMBAI, April 15 -- Nearly a year after Parel railway station was remodelled to "redefine what a station can be" under the Amrit Bharat scheme, the Central Railway is now tearing down the very structures it had built at a cost of Rs.19 crore. State-of-the-art structures and amenities will be demolished to make way for two new railway lines that will pass through Parel station and link up with the proposed Parel Terminus, to be built at the site of the railway workshop nearby at a cost of Rs.500 crore. Although the new terminus has been in the works for a decade, Parel station was selected, inexplicably, for a major upgrade, along with three other suburban stations, as Amrit Bharat stations. The Amrit Bharat scheme, under the Union railway ministry, aims to transform railway infrastructure by focusing on passenger comfort, local culture, sustainability and better connectivity. Accordingly, a new station building was built on the east side; the ticket booking office was revamped; a new toilet block with a sewerage treatment plant was constructed; and a new elevated two-wheeler parking facility was added. The station also boasted a new mini-garden and a seating area. Now, many of these amenities will make way for the fifth and sixth railway lines, which will not only segregate suburban and long-distance trains, but will also bring connectivity to the new terminus. The new mini-garden is already making way for an extended foot over bridge (FOB), in order to create space for escalators and a staircase. Since the Parel Terminus was announced in 2016, why spend Rs.19 crore on remodelling the station, only to take a wrecking ball to it a year later? "At present, the garden and a few other amenities are likely to be demolished. We are trying our best to ensure that the two new railway lines do not impact the revamped ticket booking counters and elevated parking lot," said a CR official. "Getting land for the fifth and sixth lines, which has been stuck for years, has been tricky. So it would be wrong to say there was no planning done before carrying out the revamp work at Parel," the official said. Railway officials said shifting the sixth line away from the revamped station building-cum-parking lot is out of the question. "It's the same location where the Elphinstone road overbridge existed and the double-deck Sewri-Worli Connector is being built," an official said. Also, the Parel workshop, the site of the new terminus, aligns perfectly with the two new lines, so realigning the tracks doesn't make sense. The fifth and sixth lines on the Kurla-Parel corridor received the go-ahead from the Union railway ministry in December last year. The project is rolling slowly but it achieved a milestone last week, when the railway overcame hurdles in the land acquisition process and rehabilitation of 714 project-affected persons. Parel station was converted into a suburban railway terminus in 2019, with Dadar local trains being shifted here. The addition of an outstation railway terminus will make Parel a major integration point for the Central and Western railways, easing pressure on the CSMT terminus as well....