Ahead of peak season, IR tests patience of travellers
| Date :24-Sep-2022 |
By Sagar Mohod
Even as peak travel season is on, Indian Railways (IR) is devising newer and newer strategy to fox the travellers. Be it working with lesser staff at stations to last minute cancellation of Mail/Express train for taking-up infrastructure works, Railway officials are working overtime to test the patience of its patrons. The travellers are really miffed with the working of Railways and are unable to understand the mathematics, leave alone their logic.
First of all Nagpur Railway Station is one the busy junction of Railways and the ticket window are continuously busy with passengers flow. Yet, the administration of Central Railway's Nagpur Division have failed to address the shortcomings, vis-a-vis basic expectation of people flocking the station for booking the tickets.
Bhartiya Yatri Kendra (BYK) said the problem pertains to passenger reservation system (PRS) windows whose number have been curtailed by the Central Railway's administration at Nagpur Division.
Pointing out the deficiency, Basant Shukla, Secretary, BYK, said there are four ticket windows on Eastern side of station and of them three windows remains closed. So automatically rush increases on the lone window putting travellers at a great disadvantage. The condition on Western side of Nagpur station too is more or less similar to the Eastern side. Though the PRS windows here are more in number, they are all together seven in number, but here too four windows are kept closed for reasons best known to the administration. Shukla said he has raised the issue with Sr. Divisional Commercial Manager (Sr. DCM), Central Railway, Nagpur Division, Krishnath Patil, and shared his concerns. He said BYK has also dashed of a communication to Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) and sought her intervention so that travellers are not harassed.
Shukla contended that the decision of CR authorities to keep only one window open on Santra Market side is quite baffling. People have to stand in queue for longer period as there is always rush for booking of tickets. Now that holiday season has started more number of windows would make it easy for travellers and also ease pressure on booking clerks. Many of the travellers are still not conversant with on-line mode of ticketing and prefer hard ticket owing to lesser hassles. Further with paper ticket, even if it remains waitlisted, a traveller can still board the train, unlike in e-ticket booked on-line which gets automatically cancelled in case waiting list is not cleared.
Particularly the problem on Eastern side of station needs immediate solution and divisional railway administration should take effective steps at the earliest. He pointed out that with Durga puja the rush on train increases and so is the demand for tickets. The only one counter also caters to cancellation and refund and number of times the imprest cash is not much which again is a matter of concern.
Similarly, Shukla said that in case there is some problem during booking of ticket, the inquiry-cum-booking clerk refers the traveller to Chief Reservation Supervisor (CRS) who sits on Western side of station. So the travellers need to cross over through eight platforms and reach CRS and gets his signature and troop back to Eastern side of booking window to complete the procedure. This is unnecessary hassle and it tantamount to harassment. The BYK has demanded immediate increase in ticket booking widows, particularly during the holiday season, to avoid wasting time of travellers. Moreover the problem of link failure is occurring quite frequently these days and this again put the travellers at disadvantageous position.