With less than three weeks to go for the elections, there is precious little that the authorities can do to check the flow of country liquor which is sold in almost all slum areas in the city. Practically all this liquor is transported into the city from a number of villages on the outskirts.

While transporting liquor through local trains from villages on the outskirts, namely Sayan, Gothan, Kim, Kosad, Pinjrat, etc has been rampant, the practice has also begun in express trains which are now regularly stopped a few hundred metres before the Surat railway station to unload liquor. The resulting frustration among passengers is evident. There have been two incidents in the past couple of months where irate passengers have vented their anger on the train driver and guards, alleging that they are hand-in-glove with the bootleggers.

While all the concerned agencies -- the Railway police (GRP), the prohibition department and the rail authorities here -- concede that bootlegging through trains does occur, and that too on a regular basis, they are passing the buck to each other.

Railway police PI R A Rathod, while admitting that liquor was being brought in through trains, stated that he had intensified patrolling on trains for the past couple of months. ``The problem is that those bringing the liquor are just carriers who are paid for transporting liquor,'' the PI said. In the past six months, the railway police have not arrested any major bootleggers for bringing in liquor through trains.

When asked why the patrolling police allowed bootleggers to stop trains before the railway station by pulling the chain, Rathod said, ``I do not think that there is any chain-pulling taking place. The trains are halting before the railway stations because the signal is not green as a platform may be occupied by another train.''

``There is absolutely no signal problem at the Surat Railway station,'' declared railway area manager M L Verma, adding that ``chain-pulling could be the only reason why trains were being halted outside the railway station.'' Verma said that containing the flow of liquor was the duty of the GRP and the prohibition police, and the rail department had nothing to do with it.

There is also a certain level of confusion among who does what. Prohibition department officials at Olpad (most of the areas from where liquor is brought through rail fall under this station) say that a number of `haathbhattis' (country liquor manufacturing joints) are located along the rail tracks in Sayan, Gothan and other places, and the railway police ought to raid these. The railway police, in turn state that their jurisdiction lies only within railway premises and that anything going on outside these limits is the prohibition police's job.

Jashu Barot, president of Shakti Autorickshaw Sangh, who runs rickshaws around station, seems to have his finger on the true nature of the problem. ``Everybody is involved in this business. Otherwise it simply cannot work,'' he says.