Mumbai: 40,000 ticketless commuters on locals fined Rs 1 crore in a week

MUMBAI: More than 40,000 commuters who were either not vaccinated or only had taken a single dose were caught for travelling ticketless on the suburban network since August 15 and nearly Rs 1 crore in fines recovered from them, officials said.
The rules permit only those with double vaccines to travel by local trains 14 days after their second shot, with a monthly season pass.
In just a week after the rules were relaxed, there were 3 lakh general commuters with double vaccines travelling using season passes. Passenger rights groups have demanded that the railways also issue daily tickets to the fully vaccinated.
Those caught ticketless at 53 stations were mainly citizens who were going to their workplace and were ‘desperate’ to travel. Some of them were daily wage earners, who do not want to buy monthly passes at all. A commuter, requesting anonymity, said: “There is a gap of 84 days between two vaccines and we have to wait for 15 more days before we are authorised to travel by train. It is too long a wait. Since trains are the best mode of transport, there will be cases of ticketless travelling.”
The general public is denied daily journey tickets and hence travel ticketless, said a CR official. Subhash Gupta, president of Rail Yatri Parishad, said: “The railways usually appeal to people to travel only if it is necessary and urgent. So, they should be issuing daily tickets as many double vaccinated commuters may not want to travel by train everyday. They should have the option of buying a ticket for a single day journey for some urgent work or in case of an emergency.”
Statistics provided by the CR showed that between August 11 and August 20, a total of 34,391 passengers were caught without tickets. CR collected a fine of Rs 1.42 crore from these offenders. Of these, nearly 14,100 were fined between August 15 and August 20. On CR, the average number of passengers caught without ticket per day since August 15 stood at 2,348 compared to 1,450 passengers per day between August 1 and August 14.
On WR, since August 13, 167 passengers were caught without tickets. WR collected Rs 34.12 lakh from these offenders. In the period from August 15 to August 21, nearly 4,622 passengers were caught from whom Rs 12.05 lakh was collected as penalty.
A WR official said, “On an average, 40 passengers more are caught without ticket per day since train travel was opened to fully vaccinated people from August 15. Prior to August 15, the average number of passengers caught without tickets stood at 610 per day.”
The railways has so far recovered over Rs 8 crore in fines from ticketless travellers since April.
Gupta said he woud petition the government to allow those in the 18-44 age group to travel with a single dose vaccine as they have “higher immunity” than those above 45 years of age.
“We are stringent when it comes to imposing fines on ticketless travellers. In fact, we have been conducting fortress checks (TCs at all entry/exit points of a station and on FOBs etc) during office peak hours and catching these illegal travellers,” said CR chief spokesperson Shivaji Sutar. The fine is Rs 260 plus the train fare, he added.