Mumbai-Ahmedabad route runs at 100 per cent occupancy, Railways says

Owning to its earlier RTI replies of only 40 per cent seat occupancy in the Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector, Western Railways is now on the clarification mode on Twitter. According to them, the sector is very profitable with over 100 per cent occupancy even during off-season.

The catch being that the reply was limited to number of passengers travelling between Mumbai Central-Ahmedabad and vice-versa only, not any other stations that come along the route.

"The information does not include information about en route traffic, passengers from originating station to en route stations, intermediate stations to intermediate and to destination stations between Mumbai Central and Ahmedabad, thereby showing lesser occupancy," CPRO Ravinder Bhakar said.

WR's Chief Commercial Manager Manjit Singh had given detailed figures of the seats going vacant to activist Anil Galgali in an RTI reply. It stated losses of almost Rs 30 crore between July-September 2017.

1. WR clarifies confusion over several media reports based on the reply to a RTI query @PiyushGoyal@RailMinIndia@PiyushGoyalOffcpic.twitter.com/3xht60CKQG

- Western Railway (@WesternRly) November 1, 2017

Bhakar also added that there are nine direct trains and 25 other trains going via Ahmedabad and the total earnings on this sector during that period was Rs 233 crore, against the losses of nearly Rs 30 crore as per the RTI replies.

Despite the July-September period being a lean season, he said the occupancy on this sector remained 100 percent plus on all the 34 trains.

Of the nine direct trains, there were 803,150 berths of which actual bookings were 830,978, or 103 percent occupancy Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector and in return direction, the position remained the same.

Besides, in the 25 trains going via Ahmedabad, the berth availability was 1,070,710 and actual bookings were 1,230,585, or 115 percent and in return direction, it was even higher at 121 percent.

STRANGER THINGS

Asked to comment, RTI activist Galgali has called out the reply as very strange. The specific RTI query between Ahmedabad-Mumbai implied all stations enroute, the number of passengers and revenue records and appropriate information should have been provided.

Moreover, he said in the data given under RTI, details of all classes were provided but now that is not available. The RTI reply said that on the 32 trains on Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector, there were 735,630 seats and on 31 trains on Ahmedabad-Mumbai sector, there were 706,446 seats.

"Now, the WR is saying the total number of seats on this sector on 34 trains is much higher. Why the huge discrepancy in the figures given by the WR Chief Commercial Manager under RTI and the WR spokesperson?" Galgali said.

The sector in discussion serves important en-route stations and industrial towns such as Vadodara, Bharuch, Surat, Vapi, Valsad etc.