Commuter body gets its trains from PMO

Western Railway commuters said that the fare structure for some trains has been put on a higher slab. Representation pic

Not willing to give up after their favourite services were stopped, commuters on Western Railway went all the way up to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). After following up with local railway officials and the railway board, a commuter body from Dahanu sent appeals via e-mail, ‘PM Interact' website and speed post to press for its demand. They have now received a reply that the services would be restored soon.

"Due to COVID restrictions, a lot of passenger/shuttle train services along with mail/express train services were terminated and fare structure revised since lockdown. The Central government has lifted the COVID-19 restrictions and Indian Railways has also restored maximum services of trains all over the country, but a few key passenger trains were yet to be restored on the Western Railway. This led to correspondence and emails to all authorities," Hitesh Save, spokesperson of Dahanu Vaitarna Pravasi Sevabhavi Sanstha, told mid-day.

"We had four primary demands, including restoration of some of the passenger trains like 59439/40: Mumbai - Ahmedabad, and 59441/42: Mumbai - Viramgam because of which a huge gap is created between current schedules of the trains, revision of fare structure of passengers/shuttle/MEMU trains because since COVID-19 restrictions, all these trains have been running with mail express fares, which are at a higher slab. The other two demands included withdrawal of the status of reservation for general coaches and restoration of halt at Saphale station of Mumbai-Ahmedabad Lokshakti Express," he said.

While two of their demands have been met, two are still pending. About the halt at Saphale, the station does not have enough ticket sales of passengers to continue the halt and hence has been removed. Save said after "heavy correspondence" with all the designated officers in WR's Mumbai division, its head office, the railway board and the rail ministry, they did not get any proper response. "We then uploaded our appeal letter on the ‘Interact with PM public grievances' portal that diverted it to the Western Railway head office, which responded saying that the matter was under jurisdiction of the railway board and closed the matter."

"We then followed up with an email to the PMO. After which, we compiled all the correspondence done since the past six months and attached our appeal letter and sent everything by speed post. Based on this, the PMO office filed a complaint on the PG portal citing our correspondence on May 27 to which the railways on June 1 responded stating that trains Mumbai Central-Nandurbar via Bhestan and Mumbai Central-Ahmedabad passenger has been approved by the railway board and the trains will be restored shortly," he said. "We are happy that the trains are now being restored and they will be of immense convenience to commuters," Save said, adding, "We have filed appeals for our other demands".

Railway officials said that restoration of trains and reviews of halts is a continuous process and they are done periodically as per railway board norms and guidelines, subject to a lot of conditions and factors.

27 May
When PMO turned the appeal to a complaint