SCR ferries over 1 crore passengers in 10 days

More than a crore passengers and revenue touching close to ₹130 crore in 10 days! This Sankranti/Pongal season, when scores of passengers clambered onto the trains to reach their respective destinations, South Central Railway (SCR) rewrote its own record books.

Between January 11 and 20, long distance trains carried as many as 91.3 lakh unreserved passengers, which is 2.4 lakh more compared to the same time last year, and the reserved passengers are likely to be about 16 lakh considering the carrying capacity of the 25 special trains which were run every day. Of those, 19 had reserved compartments, said senior officials.

Reservations can be made up to 120 days in advance for which around 14.5 lakh booked during this period. All this meant a record fare collection too —close to ₹130 crore of which the reserved category is likely to have contributed to the tune of ₹85 crore and unreserved category a little more than ₹45 crore.

SCR had announced 456 special trains between January 5 and 25 and within the above mentioned 10-day period, it operated 255 special trains out of which 65 Jansadharan specials were run between Secunderabad, Vijayawada, Kakinada, Rajahmundry, Nizamabad, Kurnool, Nanded, Aurangabad, Khammam, Vizianagaram to cater to the unreserved segment travelling at the eleventh hour, they explained.

To handle the heavy rush at the stations and inside trains, a vast majority of the 70,000 field personnel of the 1.05 lakh staff, including officers, were pressed into service, irrespective of the holidays and leave unless extremely necessary, to handle varied operations like ticketing, sanitation, engineering, electrical, mechanical, loco-pilots, gang men, security, etc.

“We had senior officials of different wings like commercial, security and operations at both the headquarters and divisions to look into managing the crowd to ensure a smooth and safe journey, that too on time,” said SCR Chief PRO Ch. Rakesh.

General Manager Gajanan Mallya attributed the mammoth exercise to “smooth coordination” between different departments like engineering, signalling and telecommunications, electrical, mechanical and commercial among others.

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