Unhappy with his seat allotment, Sena MP holds up Devagiri Express for almost an hour

As a result, nine other outstation trains were delayed and seven local services were cancelled.

In a glaring example of a neta throwing his weight around without thought to the inconvenience caused to public, a MLA on Wednesday night held up the Secunderabad-bound Devagiri Express for almost an hour after he was unhappy with his seat allotment. This had a cascading effect with nine other outstation trains delayed apart from seven local services cancelled, scheduled to ply from CST at the time.

The MLA in question – Shiv Sena’s Hemant Patil from Nanded refused to let the train depart from CSTM at its designated time of 9.10pm as he was allotted the side lower berth in a special coach (2ndAC) which is anyways reserved free-of-charge for ministers as per existing rules.

The 17057 CSTM-Secunderabad aka Devagiri Express was finally allowed to leave the station at 9.57 pm, a full 50 minutes beyond its scheduled departure time. According to officials, the nine delayed trains include 11305- CSTM-Solapur, 12322 CSTM-Howrah Express, 12701 CSTM-Hyderabad Express, 12133 CSTM-Mangalore (Karwar express), 12115 CSTM-Solapur (Sidheshwar express), 1011 CSTM-Manglore (Konkan Kanya Express), 11057 CSTM-Amritsar Express, 11027 CST- Madras (Chennai Express) and 11093 CSTM-Varanasi Express. While all these trains were delayed by more than 20 minutes, seven locals constituting late night services on the mainline towards Kalyan were cancelled.