SRINAGAR – Accusing the railway authorities and security personnel of selling Tatkal tickets to touts in Srinagar to make a quick buck, dozens of passengers Tuesday morning entered into a verbal duel with employees.
I came here at 8 am and waited for more than two hours as first man in the queue for a Tatkal ticket, but when the counter official took his seat, he said all tickets have been sold out, said Muzzammil Dar, a passenger.
Another passenger, Sajid, said all the persons waiting in the queue since morning were taken aback by what the counter official said. We fail to understand how these emergency tickets were sold before the counter opened. he added.
When the passengers enquired from other railway employees and security men, they were told some persons had been in the queue since midnight, even as there was none when the passengers queued up in the morning.
When contacted, the chief controller, Railways, Madan Lal, said, There are no touts in Srinagar and still we will look into the matter.
The passengers said that after raising hue and cry outside the ticket counter, the officials including railway station in charge did not respond to their demands.
These are baseless allegation by a few passengers and no such activity is allowed here, said the station in charge, Sudheer Kumar, on phone.
Another passenger, Sobia Mir, alleged the security officials on duty at the station purchased Tatkal tickets for their colleagues while civilians were left high and dry.
Recently, Northern Railway general manager, V K Gupta, had announced that over five lakh multiple personal IDs and 44,000 IDs created by agents had been deactivated since February 2011 by IRCTC’s anti-fraud team to check misuse of the ticketing service.
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