PATNA: The railways has of late become a soft target of bandh supporters, Maoists and mob agitating over different issues under five divisions of the East Central Railway (ECR).
The ECR has suffered a huge loss of revenue in the past due to bandh calls often leading to refund of railway tickets or repeated attacks on railway property by Maoists. Unfortunately, these attacks have been made either by furious mob of bandh supporters or Maoists paralyzing normal life.
According to sources, the ECR suffered a loss of about Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500 crore by way of damages to railway property by agitators or Maoists during the past four-five years.
In majority of the cases, the agitators had no grudge against the functioning of the railways yet they targeted the railways to give vent to their ire to attract the attention of the government or local bodies towards the problems facing them. Thus, bonafide passengers, including the sick, often suffered a lot while undertaking journey by trains in Bihar, particularly during bandhs.
According to ECR CPRO Dilip Kumar, the people find it convenient to target the railways in the state to highlight their problems or make their presence felt before the government.
The CPRO said that the bandh call on Monday was no doubt incident-free in Bihar as the railway property was not damaged. However, still it had a cascading effect on the railways. It will take almost a week to normalize the run of long-distance passenger trains. Besides, the railways incurred an estimated loss of several crores on Monday by way of refund of tickets and cancellation of trains, he said.
Though law and order is a state matter, the railways has tried to build its own contingency plan to deal with any emergency. It has developed its own safety machinery to deal with volatile situations. The railways is forced to suspend train movements sometimes for a day or two in the wake of Maoists’ threats or bandh calls resulting in huge loss of revenue, the CPRO said.
The CPRO said, “The railways has chalked out a composite security plan to provide foolproof security cover to railway property and passengers in Bihar. Under the plan, the entire security system is being beefed up at national level.” He said that the railways has further improved security measures in the wake of Maoists’ bandh call on Wednesday and Thursday in Bihar and a few other states.
According to a Railway Board official, to deal with such volatile situation, the railways would purchase more sophisticated machinery like explosive vapour trail detectors, X-ray baggage screening machines, X-ray body scanner portals and metal detectors for all the vulnerable stations, he said.