Ticketless travellers on Mumbai local trains on the rise

Many commuters say the lockdown this time is not as strict as it was earlier. File pic/Ashish Raje

Amid signs of Covid-19 cases coming down in the city, a grim trend of a rising number of ticketless train travellers in the past 10 days has emerged. While the access to local trains is now limited to essential workers, entry of others may defeat the purpose of imposing the curbs, fear officials.

With livelihoods badly affected due to the lockdown, several office-goers are using the theory of probability to take the risk. They say the fine for travelling without a ticket is Rs 250, which is much less than commuting on other modes of travel. Also, the chances are getting caught every day is not very high, said a few.

A youngster, who lives in Andheri and works at Bandra Kurla Complex said, "The earlier lockdown was very strict. Now we are travelling on trains without any tension. If a TC catches us, we pay Rs 250 which is too low. Also, we don't see too many TCs on platforms. If a raid happens and we are fined, we assume we travelled by Ola or Uber."

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A Bhayandar resident who too works at BKC appeared even more audacious. "We take the AC local as there are no trains 10 minutes before and after it. We have become daily travellers and the TCs kind of find us familiar and don't demand to see our tickets. On some special days, we do pay the fine and everything is settled."

A youngster from Kandivli going to Bandra credited his boss for the idea. "We used to travel by our office bus. Our boss told us to take the train. He said he would bear the fine amount if we are caught. I've been taking the local for the past month and haven't been caught even once."

Officials deny violations

Western Railway spokesperson David said those flouting the government's ‘Break the Chain' norms are liable for action. Asked about several people taking the locals without tickets, he just said they have been taking action as per the law.

Central Railway spokesperson A K Singh said, "If the ticket price is Rs 9, the penalty is Rs 250 and it's impossible that a person will be caught every day. Due to this, people are paying the penalty and travelling on locals. Let's see if the state will allow others to take the trains," he said.

Fine collection

The state has allowed fine collection of Rs 500 from those breaking Covid-19 rules. WR fined 2,768 ticketless travellers and collected Rs 8,17,310 between April 17 and April 30. Till May 23, they fined 2,930 such people and collected Rs 17,49,325 from them. So far in this month, 608 passengers have been fined for not wearing masks and they have paid a fine of Rs 1,03,900. In April, the fine collection was Rs 5,51,700 from 2,646 maskless passengers.

Between May 17 and May 23, CR made 1,090 maskless passengers pay Rs 2,10,000. From April 28 to May 2, it had fined 1,505 passengers for not following Covid-19 rules and collected Rs 7.53 lakh in fines.