RailEnquiry

For those looking forward to travelling by train during summer holidays there is not much joy - reason - majority of the trains to key places from Jaipur have 'no room vacant' position. The abrupt failure of railway network's server and poor performance of online booking have also added to the rail passengers' woes.

Starting half-a-dozen summer specials and adding extra coaches for various destinations by the authorities of North Western Railway (NWR), too has proved insufficient for the passengers.

S Srinivasan Rao, an IT professional at a call centre in Sitapura, is a worried man. He has been going to the railway reservation counter and checking the reservation website to get his tickets to Chennai confirmed. He said, "I planned a visit to my hometown a fortnight ago. However, the reservation status shows that I can't get tickets for Chennai before June 25."

The railway reservation counters at Jaipur station are witnessing long queues. Adding more to their woes are the snags in railway servers and poor response from the website.

"We can't do much when the server from Delhi goes down. It usually happens in summers following the rush at every division and headquarters of railways," said an official.

NWR officials said Jammu Tawi which connects Jammu to Ajmer is completely booked with the waiting list increasing every day. "This is one train that is much in demand during summer holidays. There are passengers who want to reserve a berth in trains for Mumbai and Chennai. The trains for Mumbai and Chennai are also completely booked till June 30," said an official.

However, authorities maintained that adding coaches to various trains would be on till June 30 as per the demands of passengers after due permission from the railway board.

Destinations which have almost no tickets in any class till June 30 include Kanpur, Lucknow, Howrah, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Jammu and Ludhiana.

This has led to fluctuating fare of flight tickets. "The Jaipur-Delhi flight usually costs me around Rs 2,675. However, on Friday I had to pay Rs 6,500 for a flight to Delhi and while returning to Jaipur I paid Rs 6,325," said Ramesh Soni, a jeweller and a frequent visitor to Delhi.