Railways refunds over Rs 16 crore in 10 days

Mumbai: The railways has disbursed more than Rs 16 crore as refund on reserved tickets in Mumbai, after people cancelled them in the last 10 days.

More than Rs 1 crore was being refunded everyday at railway counters while the average before demonetisation was Rs 40 lakh per day. These numbers indicate that the figure has jumped by almost 50 per cent in terms of refund.

The Central Railway (CR) sees refunds of Rs 30 lakh on an average per day while the Western Railway (WR) sees around Rs 10 lakh on a normal day. However, many commuters have used the railway counters to convert their black money into white, said officials.  

The trend was visible on November 8 itself when Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the announcement, with Rs 2.70 crore refunded in transactions that took place in the latter half of the day, said officials.

“If you see all the trends like booking/cancelling of long distance trains, the buying of half-yearly and yearly season tickets saw a spike almost immediately after the PM made the announcement. It was as if people knew that there was this loophole that can be exploited in the railways.”

Commuter activists such as Subhash Gupta called for the finance ministry and the CBI to look into the development.

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“It’s time the CBI and Arun Jaitley understands how Mumbai railway counters are being misused. The government should trace each and every person who has bought tickets in bulk and then cancelled them,” said Mr Gupta.

The refund amounts for November 9, 10, 11 and 12 were pegged at Rs 1.39 crore, Rs 1.88 crore, Rs 1.44 crore and Rs 1.66 crore, respectively. Lata Argade from the Mumbai Passengers Association said, “We are going to meet with the railway authorities and ask them take action or put in place some control mechanism to prevent this.”

A dip was finally seen on November 13 when most counters were shut and only Rs 83.43 lakh was refunded, as a limited number of PRS counters were open and running. However, the amount increased to beyond Rs 1 crore again on November 13, 14,15, 16 and 17.

Hitherto, there is a limit only on refund of above Rs 10,000, which is to be given through cheque or a deposit receipt, but there is no cap on the amount of booking yet.

City officials said that the full effect of the refund, as a result of the cancellations, would only be realised at the end of December.

An official said thete are many people who have taken receipts and still not encashed them since there is no time limit for this. “We expect that people will come in phases whenever its convenient for them to collect the money,” the official stated.

Meanwhile, the suburban ticketing system has also seen a rise in the number of first class yearly and half yearly tickets. In fact, The  Asian Age was the first to report that these passes had seen an increase by 17 times compared to an average day.