Passengers will no longer have to pay bribes to RPF personnel to get seats in general compartments
Passengers will no longer have to pay bribes to RPF personnel to get seats in general compartments
Passengers who travel long distance will no longer have to pay bribes to get a seat in the crowded general
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have a seat: Ticket checkers will now allot seats in general compartments of long distance CR trains. REPRESENTATION PIC |
compartment. After receiving several complaints of passengers about Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel asking for a little something in exchange for a seat, Central Railway's (CR) general manager, B B Modgil, has decided that tickets checkers will allot seats.
And the RPF personnel will now videotape the passengers with the handycam that they've been given for security purposes and also control the queue for the general compartment. S Mudgerikar, chief PRO, Central Railway, said, "We were getting lots of complaints from passengers about policemen asking for a bribe to allot seats. Last week, the GM visited the railway stations and he immediately decided to stop this illegal system."
For now, these changes have been made only in CR stations like CST, Dadar, Kurla, Thane and Kalyan. "Taking money from passengers to allot seats is totally illegal," added Mudgerikar.
In all train compartments other than the general one, it's the ticket checkers who assign seats.
Mixed reactions Passenger Ramnath Ojha, who has allegedly been forced by RPF personnel to pay up a number of times, is now happy. "I've always had to pay Rs 50 or Rs 100 as bribe to get one seat in the general compartment. This new step is a good idea," he said.
However, Mohan Singh, who frequently travels in general compartments, doesn't agree with Ojha. "This new system will last only a few days. Soon, instead of RPF personnel asking for bribes, the ticket-checking staff will do so," he said.
