The railways have initiated action against the guilty for the error and chargesheeted a railway employee for this
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Online train bookings for a Ganapati special train on Friday morning opened 50 minutes before time, creating confusion amid allegations of fraud among commuters. About 135 tickets were booked for three dates before 8 am for train number 09007 that is being planned to run between Mumbai Central-Thivim via Konkan Railway from August 6. The railways have initiated action against the guilty for the error and chargesheeted a railway employee for this.
A senior official said as per the procedure, at the time of feeding the details of the trains the opening date was entered in the system for 8 trains as 20.7.2018. However, database staff erroneously entered the date of opening for train no.09007 as 20.7.2017 instead of 20.7.2018. The data entry is done at Mumbai Passenger Reservation System situated at CSMT.
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However, as the booking opening date of Train no.09007 was erroneously entered as 20.7.2017, the booking for this train started immediately at 07.10 am. However, the first ticket was booked at 07.21 am. A total of 135 tickets were booked before 08.00 am on 20.7.2018 on this train. All these tickets were booked through internet (online) for various dates of journey. 13 tickets were booked for journey on 8.9.2018; 119 tickets for journey on 10.9.2018 and 3 tickets for journey on 15.9.2018.
Database staff responsible for this erroneous entry of date has been taken up as per rules. However, it is reiterated that this erroneous entry of year 2017 instead of 2018 was purely unintentional.
Railway officials said that they have verified the details of those who booked the tickets and they have been done from different IP addresses and are genuine passengers, not agents. "It was the mistake of the railways and we do not intend to cancel the tickets as it would be troublesome for those genuine passengers. Hence we decided not to cancel those tickets," a CR official said.
"Database staff responsible for this erroneous entry of date has been taken up as per rules. However, it is reiterated that this erroneous entry of year 2017 instead of 2018 was purely unintentional," he added.
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