Western Railway mulls raising anti-litter fine from Rs 100 to Rs 200

Aiming to deter commuters from littering the platforms and tracks with trash, the Western Railway (WR) is mulling increasing its anti-litter fine amount from Rs 100 to Rs 200 and has asked the Railway Board to consider the proposal. The move comes after the WR caught 868 people littering city stations in the past week. The search drive by the WR was conducted under the ‘Swacchata Saptah’ (cleanliness week) being held across the Indian Railways from September 17 to 25.

The WR officials revealed about their proposal for the new fine at a press conference on Friday morning. “We have asked the Railway Board to allow us to increase the fine amount to Rs 200 as we plan to continue the anti-littering campaign even after the Swacchata Saptah gets over. People in Mumbai are still used to littering on the railway property indiscriminately and we don’t want to increase the fine to an impractical amount. Hence, we decided on Rs 200,” said WR’s additional divisional railway manager, Saurabh Prasad.

Present at the press conference, Railway Board’s executive director, Abhay Bakre (environment and house keeping management), said, “Earlier, too, we have experimented with imposing fines, but it failed as the amount decided then was too high. For a while, some other divisions increased the fine amount from Rs 100 to Rs 500. However, the common man could not afford to pay. In fact, we ended up taking token amounts from people caught littering and let them go. So, now we have asked the board to consider imposing Rs 200 fine.”

Officials said that the fine amount collected from 868 people in a week would increase till the drive end on September 25. The board stated that Mr Bakre is also considering installing CCTV cameras to help identify individuals littering the railway stations.

“CCTV cameras are primarily used for security purpose. But we are thinking of installing them to identify and take immediate action against those littering stations,” he added.

The WR would also start using mechanised cleaning machines, similar to those used at Churchgate and Mumbai Central, at the Bandra and Dadar station by November-end, said Mr Prasad.