Cancellation of Samata Express brings hardships to passengers

Vizianagaram: The suspension of Samata Express causes a lot of inconvenience to the passengers who travel between Visakhapatnam and New Delhi. The train number 12807 runs between Visakhapatnam and HNizamuddin(New Delhi) is cancelled by the railway authorities due to track maintenance works which were undertaken at Sambalpur division of Chattisgarh from May 18.

This is the only train to go to New Delhi via Vizianagaram, Raipur and Bhopal. It starts at 6.25 am in Vizag and travels via Simhachalam, Vizianagaram and moves towards Raipur. It is the most convenient train for the employees and students to travel between Vizag and Parvathipuram and Bobbili. The government staff working at Parvathipuram-Bobbili and residing at Visakhapatnam prefer this train to reach their offices.

With the cancellation of train all the regular passengers are facing trouble and even they don't have other option to reach their destinations on time. Even the employees working in remote villages in Kurupam, GLPuram and Jiyammavalasamandals reach Parvathipuram by this SamataExpress and from there they travel by busses and auto-rickshaws.

Now, they have to search for alternativeto reach their workplaces.KMadhavi, working as teacher near Parvathipuram, stated "Due to cancellation of Samata Express, we are forced to travel around 4 hours by busses from Vizag to reach our school. It's painful so I decided to stay at my friends' house for these days. After restoration of the train I will travel from Vizag."

Apart from regular passengers, the pilgrims who want to visit Varanasi are also facing trouble to reach the holy place. Generally, the pilgrims from north Andhra board Samata Express and alight at Raipur and from there they will catch another express to reach Varanasi.With the cancellation of the train, the pilgrims are forced to postpone their yatras as they don't have other convenient trains to reach Raipur from here.

K Narayana, a tour operator of Parvathipuram, stated, `` Actually we planned to take 60 pilgrims to Varanasi by Samata Express, but due to cancellation of the train we have decided to reorganise the programme.