Calcutta rly official thrashed for letting train go on time

Calcutta rly official thrashed for letting train go on time
Subrata Nagchoudhury

CALCUTTA, JAN 12: Restoring work culture in West Bengal is no mean task. A section of railway commuters in the Sealdah south suburban section made that amply clear on Wednesday.Believe it or not, they bashed up the Sonarpur station master for signalling off a local train on time. The incident has sent shock waves among railway officials and a FIR has been lodged.

Station Master, A.K. Sen, escaped being seriously injured but was surprised to be at the receiving end for allowing a train to leave on time. An aggressive mob of office-goers banged the phone connecting the station with railway control and abused him.Thrice they tried to hit him with the telephone instrument but he saved himself, said Sen.

The office-goers alleged that train, which is ‘‘regularly irregular’’, left at 9.22 am, which is a minute or two before scheduled time, as a result most of them were delayed for office.This is the second such incident at the same station, said rail officials, the last one having taken place about a year ago. Sen and railway officials deny both the commuters’ charges. Sen said it was untrue that the train left earlier than schedule. As per railway norms, the train leaves at the scheduled time. For this the clocks of the station master, the guard and the driver are synchronised. Clocks of all three are synchronized with that of railway control every four hours.

‘‘Yet, I cross checked with the guard and the driver of the particular train today and they confirmed that the train did not leave earlier than schedule,’’ said Sen. ‘‘I became a victim for allowing the train to leave on time,’’ he said.Senior railway officials in Calcutta after verifing records said that the particular train has a punctuality record of over 90 percent. In the last one month, it was late only once by six minutes because the down train arrived late.

On a couple of occasions, it left a minute or two late of the scheduled time. ‘‘The group of commuters, simply wanted that the station master should hold back the train as long as the group is not in. They vent their anger on the station master because he did pay heed to such undue arrangements and let the train off,’’ said an official.

In the last six months, said K. Mukhopadhyay, the chief public relations officer of eastern railway, suburban services have suffered disruptions on 55 occasions for issues which were not even remotely connected with the railways.‘‘We are a soft target,’’ he said citing examples like cattle run over, murders, political clashes or various civic matters for which people take it on the railways. There have also been cases of disruptions when people squatted on tracks because fish in a village pond was poisoned on the Bongaon-Sealdah section.