[ad_1]
CHENNAI: As people are travelling to their hometowns for the festival holiday, railways have intensified checks in the last two days to penalise ticketless and irregular travel after there were complaints that people were travelling illegally in reserved coaches of express trains. However, regular travellers say that railways should penalise people after providing an adequate number of trains with sleeper class and unreserved class coaches.
Around 6,000 cases of ticketless and irregular travel were booked on Thursday and Friday at major railway stations, including MGR Chennai Central, Egmore, Mambalam, and Tambaram at the Chennai division.
Around 4,657 cases were booked and ₹27.16 lakh was collected as fine on Thursday, and 2,066 cases were booked and ₹6.42 lakh was collected as fine on Friday. More than 500 ticket checkers screened passengers at all entry and exit of the railway stations and checked reserved coaches of trains, according to a press release.
In a bid to prevent unauthorised people from travelling in reserved coaches, railways identified 17 high-patronage trains and carried out checks. Around 4,500 passengers with unreserved tickets were made to alight from reserved coaches.
A large number of people are trying to travel in an unauthorised manner, cramming into reserved coaches with general tickets because there are not enough unreserved coaches or sleeper class coaches on special trains.
MGR Chennai Central and Egmore railway stations saw a huge rush in the evening as several people were trying to board trains to the south for the festival. Southern Railway is operating 76 Diwali special trains, including on the Chennai/Tambaram-Tirunelveli/Nagercoil and Chennai-Coimbatore/ Mangaluru routes.
K Jayaraj, member of the zonal rail users consultative committee of Southern Railway, said that railways should plan the specials well in advance instead of announcing them at the last minute. “They should also introduce unreserved trains on all routes so that they will be useful for guest workers. The workers are forced to enter the reserved coaches because there are no adequate services. Railways are operating special trains to show that they are running the services and not to serve the passengers.”
He also said that a lot of people prefer to travel by train because it’s safer.
[ad_2]
Source link
