Railways crack whip on offenders

In view of the festive rush, the department has started taking stern action against unauthorised agents, touts and others involved in malpractices

Even if you are not in the fortunate list of passengers who somehow managed to get the confirmed reservation berths, do not try to buy your railway tickets from unauthorised agents or travel on transferred tickets. The Northern Railways has appealed to passengers to not patronise touts and refrain from travelling on transferred tickets.


Representative pic

Upping the ante
To keep a check on all these illegal activities and tackle the ongoing festival rush, the department has intensified searches against touts, unauthorised travel agencies, vendors and offenders.

To curb the malpractices in mass contact area, reservation or booking offices, unauthorised travel agencies, Vigilance department of Railways, in coordination with commercial and security departments, has launched these special checks. SK Budhalakoti, General Manager, Northern Railway, has issued these instructions for the convenience and safety of passengers.

According to railway officials, in addition to five unauthorised travel agencies, 186 touts were apprehended under Section 144 of Indian Railway Act last month. Officials have also confirmed that more than 160 people were caught travelling on transferred tickets and the department realised Rs 98,000 from them.

3 crore
Passengers are ferried by Indian Railways daily

In the net
In September 2011, 338 unauthorised vendors were caught and charged Rs 87,880, and five unauthorised vendors were handed over to RPF for further action. From April-October this year, action was taken against 23 unauthorised travel agencies and 187 tickets were recovered from them. As many as 354 touts were apprehended under Section 144 of Indian Railway Act and 1,989 people were caught travelling on transferred tickets. An amount of Rs 11,67 lakh was realised from them. In order to handle extra rush of passengers during the festive season, Northern Railway has decided to run two Unreserved special trains between New Delhi and Patna, New Delhi and Lucknow and between Delhi Sarai Rohilla-Darbhanga.