Indian Railways gets whopping Rs 125 crore from ticket-less travellers

The Central Railway (CR) said Wednesday said it has posted a record ticket checking earnings of Rs 125.16 crore from April 2018 to November 2018. The money was recovered as fine from passengers for ticket-less or irregular travel, a senior CR official said. Of it, Rs 21.39 crore was recovered from errant passengers in November 2018 alone, showing an increase of 83.45 per cent over the same month last year, he said.

The CR had recovered Rs 11.66 crore from errant travellers in November 2017, the official said. "The record ticket checking earnings could be due to our intensive campaign against ticketless and irregular travel," he said.

"In our endeavour to provide better services to bonafide rail users and also to curb the ticketless travel, our various teams of commercial staff have undertaken various innovative steps.

"Besides, our senior officers closely monitor the revenue loss caused from errant travellers and launch measure to counter it," said the official.

The CR, one of the 17 zones of the Indian Railway, covers a large part of Maharashtra and small parts of Southern Madhya Pradesh and North-Eastern Karnataka. It is further organised into five divisions - Mumbai, Bhusawal, Nagpur, Solapur and Pune.

He said during November 2018, a total of 3.91 lakh cases of ticketless or irregular travel, including un-booked luggage, were detected as against 2.53 lakh cases in November 2017, an increase of 54.55 per cent.

"During April 2018-November 2018, a total of 24.71 lakh cases of ticketless or irregular travel and un-booked luggage were detected.

"The earnings realised from such ticketless or irregular travel stood at Rs 125.16 crore during these eight months, which is 11.42 per cent more compared to earnings of Rs 112.33 crore registered during the corresponding period last year," he said.

During November 2018, 789 cases of unauthorised transfer of reserved journey tickets were detected and Rs 3.69 lakh recovered as penalty from passengers, the official said.

Another official said, "Curbing ticketless travelling has been our top priority and we launch drive very often to do so. Besides, we have been providing new avenues to book or get tickets, including on mobile phones and through ticket-vending machines, so that passengers are not inconvenienced."