Western Railway nets Rs 1.04 crore in fines over past 6 months

The railways have been conducting dedicated drives for the past six months

The Western Railway on Saturday said it had earned a handsome amount of Rs 1.04 crore in the past six months just through penalties from commuters travelling unauthorised during the pandemic in suburban and outstation trains.

Western Railway's Mumbai division has conducted various drives to check and deter unauthorised passengers in trains. More than 25,900 cases were detected in suburban as well as non-suburban sections by conducting such drives and Rs 1.04 crore was collected as fine. Sumit Thakur, Western Railway's Chief Public Relations Officer, said to ensure that no unauthorised passengers travel in trains, there have been several types of drives like regular, fortress, intensive and officer special' ticket checking drives.

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While regular drives include random ticket checking squads at stations and trains, an intensive drive is conducted with checking along with the uniformed Railway Protection Force (RPF), a fortress check is one in which a particular station is chosen, and over a stipulated period of between eight and 12 hours, ticket-checkers and security staff are deployed to check every single passenger using the station. An 'officer special' drive involves presence of senior officials to monitor the implementation of intensive drives.

Such special checks were conducted by a team of senior officers and ticket checking staff between May 2020 and November 26, 2020. A total of 25,982 cases were detected. Thakur said of these, 19,172 cases were detected in the suburban section wherein penalties / fines to the tune of R55 lakh were recovered and 6,810 cases were detected in non- suburban section, with fines of R49 lakh recovered.

Among the total, 25,982 cases, about 24,710 of them were from regular ticket checking drives and 1,272 in intensive, fortress and special ticket checking drives. Western Railway teams have detected several cases of fake ID card holders, who have been travelling in the special suburban services.

25,982
No. of cases detected during the drives

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