The presence of unreserved ticket holders in sleeper and higher class coaches of long haul trains has been a matter of serious concern for the railway officials.
Besides, leading to revenue loss to the Railways, it also creates much resentment among the commuters holding valid reserved tickets.
This menace of unreserved ticket holders occupying the seats and berths is rampant particularly in the Thiruvananthapuram Central – Guwahati Express. The officials of Thiruvananthapuram and Salem Railway divisions have received maximum complaints on unreserved ticket holders travelling in reserved coaches in this train.
Often up to 200 people are found to be in a single coach, causing much anxiety to the travelling ticket examiners and the people with proper reserved tickets. It is the large number of workers from Assam and other north-eastern states employed in the plantations and construction activities in the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala who prefer to travel in the reserved compartments without reserved tickets. They travel even up to the last point, causing much hardship to the genuine passengers. The commuters have been time and again complaining to the authorities of these divisions and also the Southern Railway headquarters, Chennai, with a request to put an end to this menace.
On the direction of the Southern Railway headquarters, the officials of both Thiruvananthapuram and Salem divisions chalked out a plan and formed special teams to check the presence of unreserved ticket holders in the sleeper and higher class coaches.
A team of officials led by V. C. Sudheesh, Senior Divisional Commercial Manager, accompanied by a host of travelling ticket examiners and the Railway Protection Force Personnel travelled in the Thiruvananthapuram Central – Guwahati Express recently and conducted ticket checking in each and every reserved compartment. They off-loaded all the passengers with unreserved tickets from the reserved coaches. As part of the exercise, a travelling ticket examiner travelled in each of the coach against the usual practice of deploying a TTE for five coaches. The official sources said that more than 300 commuters with waiting list ticket, unreserved class tickets, general tickets - were off-loaded from the reserved coaches of this train between Coimbatore and Salem Junctions alone.
