ashish, yes, I have visited ahmedabad very recently and suffice to say that there are any number of stations in WB that are as large or handle as many passengers. just off the top of my head I can name at least 3-4 of them.
you have no idea of the number of passengers carried by howrah and sealdah, to say nothing of the freight ! it doesn't even bear comparison.
NOTE : I'm not disputing that mamata is biased (which is a no-brainer) but your assertions about howrah sealdah etc frankly make no sense.
this is just about sealdah :
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1080815/j ... 697453.jsp
Sealdah is among the busiest railway stations in the country, the average daily traffic being 15 lakh people. More than 600 suburban trains (Up and Down) and 50 long-distance ones ply to and from the station every day.
keep in mind that the entire daily passenger load of Indian railways is around 13 million, sealdah alone handles about 12 % of the passengers carried by Indian railways !
howrah handles lesser number of suburban trains as it is primarily a long distance trains station. this is what wiki says. unofrtunately the irfca site is down so couldn't corroborate the data.
Trains from this station serve the Kolkata urban area via the Kolkata suburban railway, the state of West Bengal, and most major cities of India. Its twenty-three platforms handle over three hundred trains each day, serving more than a million passengers. It is served by two zones of the Indian Railways: Eastern Railway and South Eastern Railway.
the reasons why stations serving kolkata tend to be busier than those in gujarat are not too far to seek,
a) west bengal is the most densely populated state in India, it is four times more densel;y populated than gujarat !!
b) in eastern India, due to lack of development of road infrastructure, trains are the mainstay
of transport, that is not true for states like gujarat.
c) kolkata is one of the most important rail nodes of the country, connected to all the metros, not to mention the gateway to the northeast.
all this doesn't include the freight carried which too is considerable. why ?
think thermal power, think coal. then you have the daily demands of the city itself.
and of course there is still the kolkata port.
the demands on these two stations have grown so huge that two entirely new stations kolkata station and shalimar had to be created just to give some breathing space to sealdah and howrah respectively.
There are 4 big trains to Mumbai from Rajkot / day and I dont recount a single day in the year that you can get reservation if it is not done atleast 30 days in advance.
that is to one destination. here you have that situation to ALL stations, 365 days a year !!
virtually
each and every long distance train departing from sld/hwh has extra compartments attached to it at the last moment to accommodate the huge number of wait-listed passengers. what is usually a special case elsewhere has become a necessity here, so much so that travel agents are supremely confident that a person with waiting list no 70-80 will get a seat !!
just a tidbit, sealdah was at one time the busiest station in the world by train frequency, with a train departing every 52 seconds on average during peak hours. this was in the mid 90's.
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why on earth did I write so much on an irrelevant issue ? well mostly because somehow I'm very itchy to wrong information. call me pedantic or whatever, a BRFite is expected to be sufficiently aware of an issue before he/she starts commenting on it, this much is expected.
regards.
sorry for my pedantic streak !
), I had no intention of indulging in a juvenile pi$$ing contest ! 
)
.
RIP
