Railways urged to drop extra charges

TIRUCHY: Ever felt shortchanged at being forced to pay more for a railway journey if you are not boarding the train from the station where you booked the ticket? At least 3,000 passengers felt that way and recently sent a signed memorandum, specifying their PNR number to establish authenticity, to Mukul Ray, Minister of State for Railways, demanding immediate rollback of the extra charge.Suppose you book at ticket at Chennai Central for journey from Kanyakumari to Delhi. Since you won’t board the train at Chennai Central, you need to pay `10 or `15 extra if you intend to travel by sleeper or upper class, respectively.  For special trains, such as Shatabdi and Rajdhani, you need to shell out `20 more. This extra charge is levied on those who book tickets at railway counters. It does not apply to online bookings. “It amounts to penalising the public for going to the railway station for booking a ticket, which is unfair. The amount may seem like peanuts but multiply it by the number of passengers booking such tickets annually and the total figure could run into crores.” “Lakhs of poor and middle class commuters are affected by this undue levy. We want the railways to withdraw the charge immediately,” said M N Sundar, State coordinator of Akhil Bharatheeya Grahak Panchayath (ABGP), a consumer movement.  It was an ABGP delegation that met Ray and handed over the memorandum.When contacted, Southern Railway official sources said, this was a policy decision taken at New Delhi and declined comment.