Odisha: ECoR collects over Rs 8 crore fine from ticketless passengers

Bhubaneswar:  The East Coast Railway (ECoR) claims to have collected a fine of Rs 8.21 crore from ticketless travellers in the 2018-19 fiscal. Over 1, 76, 493 passengers were caught travelling without tickets in this period.

The regional railway network also earned Rs 22.20 crore from irregular travellers (travelling with wrong ticktes) and Rs 1.10 crore from unbooked or from carrying excess luggages during their journey in the last financial year.

According to a statement issued by ECoR, fine imposed on 4, 98, 437 passengers who were travelling with irregular journey tickets. During the period, 1, 23, 713 passengers have also been fined for unbooked luggage or carrying excess luggage during their train journey.

As a whole, the ECoR has realised a fine of Rs 31.50 crore from the passengers who were travelling ticketless or on irregular journey, unbooked luggage or carrying excess luggage along with other passenger related travelling irregularities from about 7.98 lakh cases.

The ECoR said it speeded up its ticket-checking drive and awareness programme to curb ticketless travel and check unauthorised visits at station premises across its network.

A large number of ticket checking staff were being deployed at major and sensitive stations along with a substantial strength of security personnel from the Railway Protection Force (RPF) for fortress checks.

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 been decided to strengthen ticket checking activities all over its jurisdiction and proposed to continue such checks in coming months.