The
Hindu: Visakhapatnam: Monday, 07 December 2015.
The East
Coast Railway (ECoR) headquarters in Bhubaneswar is conveniently ignoring the
demands for provision of halts to various trains at Duvvada Railway Station on
the plea that ticket sale is not encouraging or the rail distance between
Visakhapatnam and Duvvada is only 16 km. Ironically, halts are being given for
stations located half that distance in Odisha.
Waltair
Division has been neglected for more than 12 years since its merger with ECoR
in April, 2003. Construction of new lines, taking up of survey and construction
of new stations, electrification and provision of stoppages of trains are
mostly confined to the regions in Odisha with a regional feeling, says an RTI
activist K. Eswar.
Office of the
Chief Operations Manager, ECoR, Bhubaneswar, has failed to furnish the RTI
information regarding proposal for stoppage of all originating trains at
Duvvada on the plea that “it would adversely affect administrative efficiency
and executive getting bogged down by non-productive work of collecting and
furnishing information.”
In all, eight
stoppages have been provided in Sambalpur division between 2009 and 2014 but
only one originating train Visakhapatnam Secunderabad Garibrath was given a
halt at Duvvada after years of struggle on January 14, 2015 though the halt was
announced by the former Minister of State for Railways Kotla Surya Prakash
Reddy on December 15, 2012.
General
norms
The halt,
which was denied on the plea of lack of ticket sale, was being continued from
July 16, 2015, based on the ticket sales during the six-month experimental
period, says Mr. Eswar, who is also secretary of Duvvada Railway User’s
Association. Quoting an RTI reply from Sambalpur Division, he says that the
minimum number of tickets to be sold at the station should be 40 or more for
sleeper class for distances of 500 km or its equivalent in terms of cost of
mixed class of passengers like AC and general and distances in multiples of 100
km as per Railway Board norms.
No stoppages
should be provided when the trains are passing at odd hours. The average ticket
sale for the trains for which halts have been provided on an experimental basis
at Theruvali, Loisinga, Dunguripalli and Boinda Railway stations in the past
was much less than the norms but they were continued on daily average ticket
sales in Sambalpur Division. Mr. Eswar has said that provision of stoppages to
originating trains Visakhapatnam Mumbai LTT Express and Visakhapatnam Nizamuddin
Swarna Jayanthi express at Duvvada was not considered since 2011 though
proposals were sent to the ECoR headquarters from Waltair Division.
.JPG)
.JPG)
