RailEnquiry

Court directs railways to fill up vacancies in booking clerk posts Suburban train commuters who face the ordeal of waiting in long queues to purchase tickets may soon get some relief with the Madras High Court directing the Railways to fill vacancies in all the newly sanctioned posts of booking clerks as expeditiously as possible, preferably within four months.

Observing that there was an insufficient number of booking clerks, the court made it clear that sufficient number of those officials should be posted in all suburban railway stations.

The First Bench, comprising Chief Justice M. Y. Eqbal and Justice T. S. Sivagnanam, passed the order on a public interest litigation petition by S. Sathia Chandran, an advocate.

The petitioner stated that he was a commuter of the suburban EMU services on the Chennai Beach-Chengalpattu section.

For the past few years, quite often, there were serpentine queues at the railway stations to get tickets for travel in EMU services.

Now, the crowd had increased to unmanageable proportions. During rush hour it took a minimum of half-an-hour for a person to get a ticket. Due to the delay, travellers were unable to board their trains on time. They had to skip several services while waiting in the queue.