Title - Railway 'chakravyuh' nabs 1,570 ticketless travellers

LUCKNOW: Railways' ticket drive Operation Chakravyuh, in the last two days, caught women, police officers, leaders of famers' organisations, army personnel, students and professionals travelling ticketless. A student had boarded a train from Kanpur without ticket (WT) and was caught at Lucknow station. Though she tried evading the fine on the grounds of being a woman, she was not let off."The idea is to drive home the message that travelling without ticket is an offence," said senior divisional commissioner, Lucknow, Northern Railway, Ashwini Srivastava. Students with no money to pay the fine, were penalised in group to pay up collectively. The 36-hour long drive earned revenue of Rs 4.5 lakh.Till late Sunday evening, 1,570 passengers were caught without ticket and Rs 4,81,409 was recovered from them by way of penalty. Passengers who did not have money to pay the penalty (minimum penalty for ticketless travel is Rs 250) were charged for offences like littering and smoking that have provision for a smaller fine.

Lucknow division of Northern Railway conducted 'operation chakravyuh' to discourage ticketless travelling. "Ever since the rail fare increased, we had been catching at least 60 persons every day, on an average, without ticket at nearby stations," said the Sr DCM. Despite railways conducting regular drives, number of defaulters has not reduced.

"We wrote to Delhi after we noticed the trend and sought additional staff to conduct a massive drive," said the official. The station premises were checked at every entry/exit point to not let anybody travel without ticket escape fine. The officials said they caught a cop who was travelling with a family without ticket. He was bailed out by his friend at the station.

There were women who fought with the staff to evade fine and political representatives who threatened the staff with dire consequences when checked. The representatives of a farmers' organisation who had come to sit on a 'dharna' at the Vidhan Bhawan were caught without ticket. Others from the organization who dropped in to help them were charged too for entering the station without a platform ticket.

"We plan to launch surprise follow-up checking drives after this," said the official.

Apart from ticketless travellers, about 1,834 people were charged for littering and other railway offences and Rs 5,79,654 was recovered.