The chief minister’s impending visit turned Ghatkopar (West) station into an example of a crash course in civic cleaning on Tuesday morning.

With Prithviraj Chavan and his team expected to visit the three-storey metro station outside Ghatkopar railway station, local civic officials started cleaning the premises at 6.30am and made the area spic and span in two hours flat.

“We had got a stern warning regarding debris and garbage. We put in additional staff and vehicles to ensure that everything was cleaned, in case the chief minister decided to visit the area below the station,” a senior civic official said.

Thanking the CM, locals said he should visit the area often, just so that the area keeps getting cleaned on a regular basis.

A fleet of trucks and teams of civic workers and clean-up marshals cleaned the area, picking up garbage and debris and carting it away. Even dust on the street was swept, collected and dumped.

And, where they couldn’t clean, they hid the garbage and other debris, such as hacked trees and heaps of mud, behind parked civic vehicles. The pathway under the under-construction station was also cleared of hawkers the previous night.

Lalji Dineshbhai, a resident, said the chief minister should have visited the area under the station to see the mess.

“The place has become a civic nightmare. The clean-up has been done, but many accesses have been permanently blocked.”