Title - Flooded with complaints, NR disables FB account

Dejected over the rail passengers posting their complaints about poor operation at its page on social networking site, the Northern Railway (NR) has deleted its account. The page was hit among the passengers as it would provide adequate useful information to the passengers like seat availability, platforms, train timings and other related information.

The official said as it was ‘bringing negative’ publicity, the decision was taken though it had been very useful for rail travellers. The page of Northern Railway on Facebook was launched in April last year. While the page had over 10,000 likes, the unique hits on the website had crossed over 60,000. Facilities started earlier, was great help for passengers to know about the status of vacant berths as well as the arrival and departure of trains from the three major stations - New Delhi, Old Delhi and Nizamuddin Railway Station — in the Capital by just logging into NR Facebook page with exact platform number. However, the NR official said that the decision to shut down the facility was taken on technical grounds.

Chief Public Relation Officer, NR Neeraj Sharma said, “The decision to shut down the Facebook page has been taken on technical grounds. Several proxy pages of the Delhi Division page had also emerged over the last few months. People were confused about the authenticity of the page. People were logging into wrong sites for registering complaints. While the railway authorities were not aware of the complaints, the message that was going out was as if railway was not redressing the complaints”.

Moreover, Sharma further said that the facility on social networking sites require dedicated manpower to operate it. On the other hand, passengers did not appreciate the decision saying that the authority might have some other way of dealing with the complaints instead of closing down the page. Earlier, NR also approached the Railway Board to formulate a common guideline for the all the 16 railway zones to how to operate in these social networking sites. According to highly-placed sources in the NR, with increasing net users’ density, the page had become a huge hit with the passengers. It was also developing as a tool to regulate some of the operations in a better way. “Since it was an open platform, so many people could register their complaints as well. Instead of closing down the facility, other means like suggesting the complainant to register their complaint at the correct forum should have been the preferred choice,” said an official.