Mumbai: The public should not be allowed in coaches reserved for MLAs, said Hemant Patil from the Shiv Sena, who held up the Devagiri Express from CSTM to Secunderabad for almost an hour on Wednesday night, keeping approximately 2,000 passengers waiting. Mr Patil had thrown a fit for being allotted a side lower berth on the train.
Mr Patil, an MLA from Nanded, defended his actions of delaying the train and said that if the special coach has been reserved for public representatives, the common man should not be allowed in as the state government pays for it.
“Many members of our party who are senior citizens were allotted the side lower berth, while young men who were not part of our contingent were given the convenient lower berth,” he said.
The Asian Age was the first to break the news online, and the issue saw huge public outcry since. The 17057 CSTM-Secunderabad Devagiri Express that was scheduled to depart CSTM at 9.10 pm left the station at 9.57 pm instead, delaying nine other mail express trains that were to depart after it.
Calling it an andolan (protest), he said that he was well within his rights to demand the lower berth in II AC coach.
He said, “We had asked for the coach and according to the rule we are supposed to get it. When we realised that lower berths were allotted to others, we called up senior officials from the Central Railway, but no one answered. It was then that we decided that we wouldn’t let the train move until the lower berths were allotted to us,” he further added.
Subhash Gupta, president of the Rail Yatri Parishad and also a member of the Zonal Railway Consultative Committee (ZRUCC) said, “The MLA has come out and said that the train is always dirty and there are rats etc. but the fact remains that a public representative kept all those who could not travel in AC or were in the general coach waiting so he could get a comfortable ride,” he said.
Railway officials, on the other hand, have said that one II AC coach has exactly 46 berths, out of which 15 berths are side lower berths (the one the MLA objected to), so by default seven public representatives would have to be allotted those anyway.
“From the total 31 lower and upper berths, only one was allotted to a person who wasn’t a public representative and that person did not turn up so we gave the berth to the MLA. But keeping 2, 000 passengers waiting for one berth was something that they could have avoided,” said the railway official.
The Central Railway has filed an FIR of chain pulling after the incident, but has not yet named Mr Patil and instead filed it against an unidentified person, “We cannot file an FIR against the MLA without getting all the information, hence we are waiting for the picture to be clearer. Also, according to the same railway act that provides the MLAs a reserved coach, the remaining seats, which were eight in this case, are allotted to the common man,” said a senior railway official.
CR divisional railway manager Amitabh Ojha said that they were looking into the matter.
