Police rely on ticket data analysis to deal with festival rush at railway stations

Following consecutive weekend holidays on January 11 and 12 coupled with festival holidays on January 13 and 14 for employees and students, the Secunderabad, Nampally and Kacheguda railway stations started teeming with passengers going to their hometown from Friday evening to celebrate the festival.

The heavy rush at these three busy stations is prompting the police and the railway staff to exercise more caution till the train departs from the station. In coordination with the railway commercial wing, the police made elaborate arrangements to deal with the rush at the stations.

After analyzing the data related to over capacity train ticket booking along with the schedule, the police are making necessary arrangements to ensure hassle-free journey to passengers. To avoid traffic congestion in front of the stations, the police earmarked separate lanes for auto rickshaws and cars to facilitate passenger reach the station premises easily.

To deal with the situation, the Railway Protection Force (RPF) is deploying 115 more personnel in addition to 250 existing personnel working at Secunderabad, Nampally and Lingampally stations.

Apart from ensuring proper queues for boarding a train, the police are also laying more focus on preventing theft of bags and mobile phones while boarding the train. “We are deploying our staff in plain clothes to keep a watch near the coaches,” a senior police official said, adding that a constant vigil would be maintained on all the platforms in three stations through surveillance cameras.

The official said the department was focusing both on visible policing and carrying out decoy operations to prevent thefts. The official further stated that the rush would be minimum this time as a few trains would start from the newly inaugurated Charlapalli railway station. To clear extra rush, the South Central Railway (SCR) is operating 52 special trains for Sankranti.