The Madras High Court Bench here on Wednesday directed General Manager of Southern Railways to consider a proposal forwarded to him by the Divisional Commercial Manager here through Chief Commercial Manager (Passenger Marketing) for replacing two reserved coaches in Pandian Express, a superfast overnight express train operated between Madurai and Chennai, with unreserved coaches. A Division Bench of Justices S. Nagamuthu and J. Nisha Banu also directed the General Manager to take a decision on the issue within a week and report to the court by November 30 since the proposal had been made in the larger interest of the common man who travels in trains. “You cannot convert an entire train for upper class people alone. Trains are meant for the common man and the poor,” Mr. Justice Nagamuthu told the counsel for Southern Railways.
The interim orders were passed on a public interest litigation petition filed by R. Rajaselvam of Dindigul against reduction of the number of coaches in Pandian Express from 24 to 22 since August this year when Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches, designed on German technology, were introduced for the express train. The petitioner sought for a direction to Southern Railways to add two more unreserved coaches for the exclusive use of women and the physically challenged.
Initially, the counsel for railways opposed the plea on the ground that it was the prerogative of the railways to add or reduce the number of compartments in a train depending upon several factors such as passenger demand, technical feasibility and so on. He also produced a Supreme Court verdict and contended that no one could file petitions in courts and seek a direction to increase or decrease the number of coaches since they were issues that could be decided only by competent authorities. However, refusing to accept his arguments and pointing out that the apex court verdict was not applicable to the facts of the present case, the Division Bench directed him to persuade the officials concerned to add two more coaches to the train if there were no technical hurdles in doing so. It was only after that, the counsel reported back that the Divisional Commercial Manager had sent a proposal for replacing two reserved coaches with unreserved coaches.
