Visakhapatnam: A glance at the official list of the total number of people caught travelling ticketless in the last four years, shows that East Coast Railway (ECoR) occupies the second lowest position among all 16 zones after South East Central. According to these figures, only 16.31 lakh passengers were caught travelling without a ticket in the last four years in the zone, from 2013-14 to 2016-17 (till February) fiscal. This figure is far lower than other zones.
The revenue realised through the fines imposed was '68.97 crore, according to railway ministry reports. On the other hand, 17.59 lakh passengers were cau-ght for ticketless infringements in the Northeast Frontier zone, while 41.02 lakh people were nabbed for the same offence in the North Eastern zone in the last four years. It is evident that there could be one of two reasons for this — either the checks were not being conducted properly or more passengers were travelling without a ticket.
According to sources, the ticket checks are not being conducted thoroughly in small stations and the bigger stations are mostly focused in the zone. Ticket checks in unreserved coaches are also far from efficiently conducted. The unmanned entry/exit points at stations are also giving passengers scope to evade ticket checks. For instance, at the Vizag station, the food plazas like Rail Dhaba and Jan Aahar at platform 1 have entry points from both the platform side as well as outside the station.
When asked, a railway official from the Waltair railway division said, “Despite inadequate manpower, the available staff are doing their best to keep monitoring ticketless travel and plug revenue leakage.” He also claimed that the percentage of online ticket booking is going up every year in the zone. “This increase indicates that more people are buying tickets. Moreover, vigorous drives such as surprise checks, ambush checks, fortress checks are also being conducted to dissuade people from ticketless travel.”
