Bhubaneswar: The East Coast Railway (ECoR) has collected Rs 8.21 crore as fine from around 1,76,493 ticketless travellers in the 2018-19 fiscal, a senior ECoR official said.
The national transporter also earned Rs 22.20 crore from irregular travellers (travelling with wrong tickets) and Rs 1.10 crore from un-booked passengers or for carrying excessive luggage during their journey in the last financial year. “Fine had been imposed on 4,98,437 passengers who were travelling with irregular journey tickets. During the period, 1,23,713 passengers have also been penalised for un-booked luggage or carrying excess luggage during their train journey,” an ECoR statement said.
In total, the ECoR has collected a fine of Rs 31.50 crore from the passengers who were caught during for ticketless travelling or on irregular journey, un-booked luggage or carrying excessive luggage along with other passenger-related travelling irregularities from about 7.98 lakh cases, the official said.
Sources said the ECoR has intensified its ticket-checking drive, awareness programme to curb ticketless travel and check unauthorised visits on station premises across its network.
“Adequate number of ticket checking staffers has been deployed at strategic and sensitive railway stations apart from required security personnel from the Railway Protection Force (RPF) for fool-proof checks,” the official said.
Ticket-checking staff including commercial supervisors, chief ticket inspectors (CTI), train ticket examiners (TTE) alongside the Railway Protection Force (RPF) staff are involved in the drive and awareness programme headed by commercial officers both from ECoR headquarters and the three divisional headquarters at Khurda Road, Sambalpur and Waltair.
Claiming the ticket checking drives are helpful to curb leakage of revenue from passenger business, the ECoR has decided to strengthen ticket checking activities all over its jurisdiction and proposed to continue such checks in near future.
