Nearly 1.9 cr travel ticketless in trains

Nearly 1.9 cr travel ticketless in trains
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Highlights

Close to 1.9 crore railway passengers were found to be travelling without a proper ticket in 2015-16. Most such passengers were caught in the Northern & South Central Railway zones though these zones do not account for the highest passenger traffic Ticketless travel on Indian Railways in 2015-16 was close to 1.9 crore passengers.

Close to 1.9 crore railway passengers were found to be travelling without a proper ticket in 2015-16. Most such passengers were caught in the Northern & South Central Railway zones though these zones do not account for the highest passenger traffic Ticketless travel on Indian Railways in 2015-16 was close to 1.9 crore passengers.

This figure is less than 0.5% of the total originating passengers in 2015-16. But which zone contributes to most such ticketless passengers? Of all the zones, most number of ticketless passengers was caught in the Northern zone in each of the last four years. The Northern zone is closely followed by the South Central Railway and the Central zone.

In 2015-16, together with Western zone, these four zones contributed close to 47% of all such ticketless passengers who were caught. The total number of ticketless passengers detected by the Railways has increased from 1.46 crore in 2013-14 to 1.89 crore in 2015-16, an increase of close to 30% in 3 years. In 2016-17, the number of such passengers has already touched 1.85 crore (till Feb 2017).

It has to be noted that neither the Northern nor the South Central zone figure in the top four when it comes to total passenger traffic. As per data shared by the government in the Lok Sabha, more than Rs 800 crore was realised in dues from these ticketless passengers in each of the last two years (2015-16 and 2016-17).

The average realisation per ticketless passenger is slightly more than Rs 450. Among the various zones, the highest realisation of dues was in the Central zone in each of the last 4 years. In 2015-16, more than Rs 100 crore was realized in dues in each of the three zones of Central, Northern & South Central.

According to the government, 19.7 lakh checks were conducted between April 2016 and February 2017 in all the zones to detect such ticketless passengers. The government has also approved a proposal for ‘Automated Gate Based Ticket Checking System’ trial in two stations at a cost of Rs 4.16 crore.

By Rakesh Dubbudu

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