Bhubaneswar: The East Coast Railway claims to have speeded up its ticket-checking drive and awareness programme to curb ticketless travel and check unauthorised visits at station premises across its network.
In April, the first month of the fiscal, ECoR detected cases of nearly 53,000 passengers travelling without ticket – which was 19.23 per cent more than the detections in the corresponding period last financial year. It realised an amount of Rs 2.33crore which was 23.10 per cent more than the figure for April 2017.
In the last fiscal, ECoR had fined 5.90 lakh passengers travelling without ticket, and the amount thus collected was of Rs 25.78crore – which is 15.6 per cent more in the number of cases and 16.5 per cent more in realisation of fine than of the 2016-17 fiscal. In the 2016-17 financial year, the regional railway network had registered 5.10 lakh cases of travel without ticket and realised a fine of Rs 22crore.
During the awareness and ticket check drives, the passengers have been counselled and educated to buy bona fide tickets from ticket counters to make their journey hassle-free. Commuters have also been advised to buy Monthly Season Tickets (MST) to avoid tiresome queues at booking counters. The MST is also much cheaper (about one-third) than the regular journey fare of a month.
Passengers have been encouraged to use ATVM (automatic ticket vending machine) Smart Card, which is one of the most-convenient ways to buy tickets. Passengers have also been advised to carry minimum luggage during train journey, so that their travel will be more comfortable.
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 (Visakhapatnam).