Wednesday, Apr 24, 2024 | Last Update : 02:18 AM IST
More ticketless travellers in April-July compared to 2017
Passengers who were very arrogant and did not want to pay the fine were sent to the Railway Protection Force (RPF) station.
Mumbai: According to Central Railway (CR) figures for April-July 2018, the number of ticketless passengers has gone up by 10 per cent i.e. an increase of 50,000 in the past four months in number terms.
A total 5,06,500 ticketless travellers were fined between April and July 2017, while the number of such travellers rose to 558,900 in the corresponding period this year.
Officials informed The Asian Age that a person found travelling without a ticket was asked to pay a fine of Rs 250 plus the minimum ticket fare if he or she had boarded a second-class coach on the suburban line.
A ticket checker (TC) from Dadar station, which has a sanctioned strength of 42 TCs, said that generally, a ticketless traveller had to cough up the fine and leave the station.
Passengers who were very arrogant and did not want to pay the fine were sent to the Railway Protection Force (RPF) station, from where they were produced before the railway magistrate who meted out pecuniary punishment.
A RPF officer of Dadar station said that if a TC brought a ticketless traveller before them, they invoked sections 147 and 155, along with section 137 of the Railway Act.
Section 147 involves entering railway premises without proper ticket or damaging property while section 155 prohibits passengers from entering a compartment where no berth or seat has been reserved for their use, providing for their removal and punishment for the same.
According to section 137 of the Railway Act (1989), travelling without ticket, improper ticket or un-booked luggage is an offence punishable with fine.
Subhash Gupta, president of the Railway Pravasi Sangh, said that as passengers were increasing day by day, the Railways was unable to develop infrastructure in that proportion. In addition to this, the number of
TCs wasn’t increasing proportionately to the increase in number of passengers which is why people were managing to travel sans tickets.
Mr Gupta also appealed to the people to purchase tickets as the railway was a comparatively cheap mode of transportation.
