Demonetisation and the prevailing cash crunch has seen a reduction in unreserved tickets as well as parcels carried by trains in Bengaluru division of the South Western Railway.
While the number of persons taking unreserved tickets has gone down by nearly 10 per cent, the number of parcel bookings on trains has dropped by one-fifths, said Sanjiv Agarwal, Divisional Railway Manager, on the sidelines of a press conference on Wednesday.
Officials said on average, the Railways would see up to Rs. 10 lakh worth of tickets for the unreserved compartments and nearly Rs. 4 lakh worth bills generated for parcel bookings per day. However, demonetisation has resulted in an average loss of Rs. 1.8 lakh per day for Bengaluru division.
“There has been little impact on the reserved ticket as more than 60 per cent of the booking are done online,” said Mr. Agarwal.
Point-of-sale devices
To counter the cash crunch and to encourage digital payments, the Railways will be procuring 73 point-of-sale (PoS) devices (for the use of debit and credit cards) at their booking counters within a month. “This will be used at passenger reservation counters and parcel booking centres,” said Mr. Agarwal.
