Winning Bizness Desk
Mumbai. India has the highest number of railway passengers in the world. Railways are seen as a cheap and good public transport option across the country and this mode of travel is preferred by passengers owing to the huge railway networks across the country. However, at the same time, the number of passengers traveling without tickets is large. In the last financial year, the Railways has earned huge revenue from ticketless passengers. Railways caught 3.6 crore passengers traveling with or without wrong tickets in 2022-23. Compared to the year 2021-22, the number of such passengers has increased by more than one crore. This information was revealed in a reply received under Right to Information (RTI) and according to this reply, 1.10 crore people were caught traveling without tickets or with wrong tickets in 2019-2020, while the number rose to 2.7 crore in 2021-22 and 3.6 crore in 2022-23. In 2020-21, there was a wave of the Kovid-19 pandemic. That year the figure was 32.56 lakh.
Traveling without a ticket is punishable offence
In response to an RTI query by Chandrasekhar Gaur, a social activist from Madhya Pradesh, the Railways has disclosed the amount of fine collected from such passengers in the last three years. According to information provided by the Railways, the Railways has collected a fine of Rs 152 crore in the financial year 2020-21, Rs 1,574.73 crore in 2021-22 and Rs 2,260.05 crore in 2022-23 from the passengers traveling on wrong tickets and traveling without tickets. In the year 2022-23, the number of passengers caught by the railways without tickets is more than the population of many small countries. Traveling without a ticket is a punishable offence.
Passengers increasing day by day
The number of railway passengers has increased in the last few years. Many express trains were canceled during the Covid pandemic period and were not restarted. As a result, there has been a huge increase in the congestion in the railways. Due to heavy rush during holidays, the number of passengers traveling on normal tickets has also increased in reserved coaches. This also includes passengers whose tickets have not been confirmed from the reserved or immediate quota.
