Title - Dawn brawls for tatkal train tickets in Panaji

PANAJI: At 6am, the only difference between the Konkan Railway ticketing counter at the KTC bus stand and the fish market is perhaps that transactions at the fish mart are more civilized.

Even before daybreak, the choicest cuss-words rent the air in the dingy corridor outside the ticketing counter. Fist-fights, pushing and shoving, police histrionics and even dramatic shutting down of the counters to 'teach the unruly crowd a lesson' are commonplace at the ticketing office on the first floor of the KTC building, which caters to a large chunk of rail commuters from North Goa.

While regular commuters have for long been demanding a mechanized token system in lieu of the inefficient queue system still followed, those unable to claw their way through the brawling crowds are forced to seek out the services of travel agents to book their tatkal tickets instead.

While the tatkal counter at KTC officially opens at 10am, the stairs leading to the counter are crammed with people from 4am. Some desperate commuters even arrive the night before, and sleep on the landing to be first in line to get the first token, but even then, a hassle-free ticketing experience is wishful thinking.

"We came here last night at 11pm. We slept on the corridor outside the office, but when we awoke at 5am, there were already 10 people who had formed a queue. Despite waiting there all night, I was pushed to the back and did not get a confirmed ticket," Vinay, a menial labourer from Haryana, said.

Rajan, a worker from Kerala echoed this and said, "When I arrived at 2am, there were already some people waiting to buy the 10 tokens, which will then decide their place in the queue. The security guard wrote down our names and promised that the queue would be formed according to his 'list' but when the counter staff arrived at 8am, he declared that there was no list, and everybody pushed and shoved to form a new queue."

Everybody was shouting, the police were called in to resolve the disputes and finally, they closed the counter for half an hour. When they re-opened it, all the tatkal tickets were already booked."

If getting a spot in the queue is a nightmare, it is nothing short of an ordeal for women. "I unsuccessfully tried booking tickets to Delhi on the irctc website for three days before going to the counter. While it is understandable that they do not have a separate queue for ladies (even though railway rules require them to), it is very difficult for a woman to wait in such conditions-the corridor is dark and filthy; the lights are switched on only at 8am. When the gates are opened, there is a stampede to get in queue and even though policemen are called in to monitor the rowdy crowd, they are of little help," said Dorji Kyi, a Tibetan tourist who visited Goa last week.

Andrew Rego, who was waiting in the disorderly queue to get a tatkal ticket to Mumbai said the situation is even worse at the smaller reservation counters at Karmali and Tivim stations. "I came here because I heard that this counter was very plush when compared to those at the railway stations, with seating and air conditioning but during the morning hours, it is worse than a fish market," he told TOI.

KRC officials admit that two counters are not sufficient to cater to the kind of crowd they receive. "The rush for tatkal tickets is unavoidable. The tatkal timings were shifted from 8am to 10am to prevent people from spending the night at the counter but this does not change the demand for tickets on emergency basis. We are now going to open PRS (passenger reservation system) counters at all Konkan railway stations in a phased manner, at the rate of two a year," KRC senior public relations manager Baban Ghatge said.