Central Railway earns ₹100 crore as fine from ticketless travellers

The Central Railway (CR) earned ₹100.82 crore from passengers travelling without tickets on its suburban and non-suburban train network between April and November this year. Over 1.7 million passengers were booked for travelling without railway tickets.

This also includes ₹26 lakh collected from 23,816 passengers who were fined for not wearing masks. CR also registered 29,019 cases against passengers for not following Covid-appropriate behaviour such as spitting inside the train compartment and railway platform, crowding at the booking office, among others.

₹17.73 crore was collected from 465,000 passengers travelling without railway tickets on the suburban train network alone.

The suburban CR includes a mainline that operates between Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT) and Kalyan/Karjat and Kasara railway stations, the harbour line between CSMT and Panvel and the trans- harbour railway line between Thane and Vashi. The non-suburban CR refers to railway lines ahead of Karjat.

“In terms of earnings, Bhusaval division has registered a revenue of ₹33.74 crore, followed by Mumbai division with ₹33.20 crore from suburban and non-suburban train networks. Central Railway, in its endeavour to provide better services to bonafide rail users and also to curb ticketless travel, has regularly conducted intensive campaigns against ticketless and irregular travel in suburban and non-suburban trains in accordance with government guidelines and following coronavirus appropriate behaviour.” said Shivaji Sutar, chief public relation officer, Central Railway.

Since August, after passengers were allowed to travel on trains again following a four-month travel ban due to the pandemic, the number of passengers travelling by local trains has increased. The railways currently allow only fully-vaccinated people to travel and issue only monthly passes to passengers.

The Central Railway operates 1,774 local train services on its network and 1,367 train services on the Western Railway network.