At least 60 per cent of those caught travelling by local trains with fake identification, held cards of medical companies, pharmacies and medical shops. Tired of growing cases of illegal travel, ticket checkers are asking for further details like the GST number of the pharmacy and medical company, letters to allow travel from these companies, and other details to cross-verify the genuineness of the passenger. This comes at a time when a photo-based Universal Travel Card with a new QR code is on the anvil.
As per latest figures, there have been over 3,500 cases of unauthorised travel since April, in violation of the Disaster Management Act. Over 1.5 lakh people travelled without tickets on Central and Western Railways (CR and WR) between January and June.
“Our staff has no other option but to ask for additional details,” a CR official said, adding that they are doing everything possible to prevent fraudulent use of IDs.
A ticket booking clerk said the staff doesn’t issue tickets if they find the passenger’s demeanour suspicious. “Almost every day there are arguments with passengers over ID cards. This is happening at almost all railway stations and it gets really tiring making people understand,” said a railway employee and a member of the railway union.
As per figures from WR, from April 1 to June 25, there have been 740 cases travel with fake IDs; fines to the tune of Rs 3.7 lakh were collected from them. The CR authorities have caught at least 3,000 people for unauthorised travel and fines to the tune of Rs 15 lakh have been collected.
On the WR, from February till June 28, the authorities have caught 60,090 ticketless travellers, from whom fines amounting to Rs 1.78 crore were realised. The situation on CR is grimmer, as between April and June 24, the authorities recovered Rs 3.31 crore from 92,163 ticketless travellers.
