7 lakh ticket-less travellers in Delhi division of Railways

Around 7.2 lakh cases of ticket-less travel were detected from the Delhi Division of Railways, with the division collecting penalty earnings worth Rs 15.5 crores in the first six months (April to September) this year.
The penalty earnings amounted to Rs 10.4 crores during the same period in 2014-15, with the Delhi Division registering an increase of 48.5 per cent in such earnings.
The present amount has been realized through detection of 7.2 lakh cases of ticket-less travel during April-September, said a senior railway official.
There were 98,000 cases of ticket-less travellers in September alone and penalty of Rs 2.32 crores has been realized from them.

Describing the vigorous ticket checking drive by the Railways as "one of the steps being taken to arrest declining passenger traffic" in the recent past, he said a total of 3,019 checks were conducted during September 2015-16.
A total of 732 passengers were prosecuted during the nine magisterial checks/bus raids conducted at Gurgaon, Nangloi, Delhi Shahdara, Delhi, Fridabad and Nizamuddin stations.

The official further said 14 touts were prosecuted under Section 143, 936 vendors under Section 144, 298 persons under Section 156 for roof riding, 1,095 persons under Section 162 for travelling in ladies compartment and 1,238 persons were prosecuted under Section 167 for smoking, in September.

"We have been continuously analyzing the drop in passenger traffic in unreserved segment and have identified few stations and sections for intensified ticket checking drive through combined checks and magistrate checks," Delhi Divisional Railway Manager Arun Arora said.
The Railways has also launched facilities for booking of paperless unreserved tickets as well as platform tickets to cut queues at the reservation counters.