The sum collected by SR zone accounts for nearly five percent of the total fine amount realized by Indian Railways, which has approximately netted a whopping Rs 867.36 crore (till December 2017) across the country. About 9.48 lakh passengers (183.36 lakh persons across the country) have been found travelling without valid tickets in reserved coaches during April 2017 – January 2018 period in the zone, senior SR officials revealed to DT Next.

Going by the reply given by union minister of state for railways Rajen Gohain in the upper house of the Parliament recently, over 18 lakh checks were conducted between April-December 2017 to detect persons traveling without ticket or with invalid ticket in reserved coaches. 

Pertinently, Chennai division of Southern Railway (SR) had formed a special team called ‘cultural squad’ a few months ago to minimize cases of unreserved passengers boarding reserved coaches. 

“The idea is to educate travellers more than penalizing them. Instead of imposing penalty straightaway, we educate unauthorized travellers, a good number of whom hailing from northern and northern states are still unaware that they should not board reserved coaches with unreserved tickets,” a senior SR officer requesting anonymity said, adding that trains bounds to Howrah and Guwahati from Tambaram among north and northeast bound trains recorded cases of unauthorized travel the most. “Most of the travellers are ordinary labourers from north India. If 50% of them are unaware of unauthorized travel, alike number do it despite being aware of the illegality of the travel. If we penalize a Guwahati or Howrah bound passenger, s/ he would end up paying up to Rs 2,000 fine easily. 

Our intention is not to just collect fine, but to educate them so that they would avoid unauthorized travel and not disturb reserved passengers,” the officer explained, admitting that they must also take a fair share of the blame because of railway’s inability to operate adequate number of unreserved special trains.