The Bhubaneswar-headquartered East Coast Railway (ECoR) has gone into damage control mode after getting a spate of complaints on Twitter for ignoring Visakhapatnam junction in the announcement of halts for the 12503/04 Kamakhya-Bengaluru Cantt-Kamakhya Humsafar Express and announced a halt at Visakhapatnam Railway Station. The ECoR issued a press release a few days ago announcing that the 12503/04 would halt at Vizianagaram and Duvvada, ignoring Visakhapatnam station. This was despite the official announcement of its stoppage at Visakhapatnam in the Railway Timetable ‘Trains At a Glance 2016-17’.
“Vizag suffering heavily under ECoR. Please take up the issue with Suresh Prabhu and get us railway zone,” “Solid proof that ECoR is working against Visakhapatnam” and “Jealous ECoR taking revenge because of the success of 06579/82664” are a few of the tweets by irate passengers.
“Stoppage of this train at Visakhapatnam is mentioned in table No.29 and 29 A in TAG. Surprisingly, this stoppage is deleted in the train schedule. It shows that injustice is continued to Waltair Division by ECoR,” noted Duvvada Railway User’s Association secretary Kanchumurthy Eswar in a statement. There are several instances of the ECoR working against the interests of Visakhapatnam. The conversion of the 06579/82664 Yesvantpur-Visakhapatnam-
Yesvantpur Tatkal Special, introduced by the South Western Railway (SWR), into a Suvidha Special in the return direction had drawn the wrath of passengers on Twitter.
The ECoR issued a statement on Saturday that 12503/04 Kamakhya-Bengaluru Cantt-Kamakhya Humsafar Express, which would begin its maiden run on Sunday, would stop at Visakhapatnam station.
