Railways collect Rs 34.06 crore penalties from ticketless passengers in 6 months
Guwahati: The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) conducts regular intensive ticket checking drives in order to ensure hassle-free, comfortable travel and better services to all bonafide passengers.
Keeping a constant check against the ticketless and irregular travellers, drives are conducted to discourage such activities that lead to inconvenience for genuine passengers.
During the period between April 2024 and September 22, 2024, as many as 3,96,101 cases of ticketless and irregular ticket passengers were detected leading to the earning of Rs 34.06 crore against realisation of fare and penalties from the offenders.
During the same period in the previous financial year, the fare and penalties realised was about Rs 33.78 crore from a total of 3,94,076 cases detected.
In comparison to the corresponding period of the previous year, 0.51 per cent more cases were detected with 0.82 per cent higher earning in terms of realisation of penalties and fares from the offenders during the current year.
During April to August of the current 2024-25 financial year, three surprise ticket checking drives against unauthorised passengers were carried out with the assistance of railway magistrates to detect passengers travelling without proper journey tickets.
During the drives, the magistrates prosecuted 328 persons who were found to be violating the Railway Act, 1989 and were fined.
The fine imposed on these unauthorised passengers include fares and penalty charges along with government charges.
The total fares and penalty realised out of the three checks amounted to Rs 10.58 crore.
Travelling without proper ticket or beyond authorised distance may lead to levy of excess charge and fare.
In case a passenger fails or refuses to pay the same on demand, he shall be in default of payment and will be prosecuted under relevant sections of the Railways Act, 1989.
The NF Railway has appealed to the general public to travel with proper and valid tickets and carry valid identity cards in order to avoid inconvenience.
The passengers now can purchase unreserved tickets from one part of the country to another through the Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) mobile application on their smart phones.
The UTS application can be downloaded on both android and apple app-store.