Look at the following headlines published in the newspapers and media. What is the reason that fine collections by railway checking staff in IR has raised in crores of rupees?
This time the Indian Railways has broken all the records of the amount of fine charged for checking tickets. The amount of fine has gone beyond lakhs, crores to billions. It is a matter of great joy that the ticket checking staff is doing their job with utmost care. But is it really a matter of pride for us Indians, isn’t it a social crime to travel without a ticket? Is it ok to be proud to display these fine figures and declare it as earnings or railway income?
The arrest of thousands of unticketed passengers is not only a sign of the promptness of the ticket checking staff but also the mismanagement of the railway administration in providing tickets. It also exposes the lax, sluggish security system, that how the persons can travelling without buying tickets? In about two months of the transition period, the operations of all passenger trains were closed and as soon as the passenger trains started one by one, the restrictions of the transition started to get relaxed, and the passengers started taking trains for commute to their jobs. Rail is the easiest, convenient, and cheapest public transport in our country. But the railway, which is controlled by the central system, has to run on the basis of the rules of the State Disaster Control Committee in these days, so the passenger trains started running in a restricted form. Short distance passenger tickets in special trains were skyrocketing, but the travelling could not being done without reservation (it still cannot be done in many regional railways, due to state restrictions), and facilities such as public utility passenger trains, intercity trains, general Second class tickets of passengers, monthly for passengers traveling by train daily, MST season pass all these were discontinued and are still closed in many areas. So what can a common traveler do? He acted in unreasonable way which caused these undesirable records of railways.
While this is true that if there were no restrictions on tickets in the train at that time, then the situation of spread of infection would have been uncontrollable, but now that all the employment, business, enterprises, factories, offices, educational institutions have been opened, the citizen is forced to travel, they are forced to travel by road. Buses, other passenger transport are running at full passenger capacity on the roads, so why only rail travel is restricted?
It looks like for common people, not rail travel, only rail tickets are banned. There are many hurdles in getting tickets. The problem of the common traveler is this, unreserved ticket is closed, MST is closed but the trains are seen running. All the righteousness of the passenger gets defeated by the costly travel expenses of the road .Unreserved vehicles running in some areas are as low as one round in a day in some areas. For some areas, MST pass has been allowed, but only in specified trains which are very few.Apart from this, express trains stopping every 25-50 kms are also reserved? Online system of unreserved tickets UTS closed, ticket distribution is still not at full capacity at the ticket window, if this is not all the mismanagement of the railway administration, then what is? The entry and exit routes at major stations are controlled, only after the ticket is checked, a passenger can enter the railway platform for his train journey, but what about the hidden entry/exit routes built at the ends of the platforms? And at small stations how can the railway administration stop the passengers with hardly any checking staff, free security personnel and open ground for going to and from? In the way, passengers are boarding the trains it is likely that hardly even half of the passengers without tickets are being caught. You can see the pictures of 200-300 people traveling in 90 passenger capacity of the entire reserved second class, in which the coach is reserved but the staff is never available to monitor it, such complaints are readily available on Twitter. But what administrative action has been taken, it is not found anywhere.
The railway administration should run all the trains of its pre-transition period as soon as possible. All the resources for issuing tickets should be correct. UTS, MST season passes should be started as usual. If Railway administration wants to make changes in MST and second class tickets and for this reason, the trains are not started in many areas, then make changes as soon as possible, because it is very necessary to start them. The railway administration should keep this thing in mind, the non availability of rail tickets is the biggest compulsion for traveling without ticket.
Rail Duniya 