Railway TC collects Rs 1.51 cr fine from ticketless commuters

A railway ticket checker caught 22,680 ticketless passengers in 2019 and collected a whopping Rs 1.51 crore fine from them, an official said on Thursday.

Travelling Ticket Inspector S B Galande, part of the Central Railway (CR) Flying Squad, has become the highest individual revenue earner for CR last year, the official said.

Three other TCs of the Central Railway also collected over Rs 1 crore each in fines from ticketless commuters in 2019, the official said.

They include M M Shinde and D Kumar, also from the same squad and Ravi Kumar G, chief ticket inspector of Mumbai division. While Galande, Shinde and D Kumar collected the fine on long distance trains, Ravi Kumar G did the same from commuters on Mumbai suburban network, the official said.

Travelling Ticket Inspectors are authorised to collect fines from ticketless passengers on both local and long- distance trains, he said.

Shinde collected Rs 1.07 crore from 16035 ticketless travellers, D Kumar Rs 1.02 crore from 15234 commuters, and Ravi Kumar collected Rs 1.45 crore from 20657 travellers.

"We felicitated them with cash reward and certificate from our general manager for their contribution," said Shivaji Sutar, chief public relations officer of Central Railway.

In 2019, Central Railway earnedRs 192.51 crore from 37.64 lakh cases of "ticketless and irregular" travel against Rs 168.30 crore from 34.09 lakh cases in 2018, he said.

Despite regular drives against ticketless travel, the number of such cases are increasing every year, another CR official said.

"Compared to the previous year, the earnings in 2019 increase by 14.39 per cent and cases of ticketless travel rose by 10.41 per cent," he said.