UDALGURI, July 13 ? The Lakhimpur-Alipurduar entire gauge mail and the Rangapara-Rangiya passenger trains on the tracks of Rangapara-Rangiya junctions have been turned into the ?safe carriages? of valuable logs. The carrying of unauthorised valuable logs in the railway compartments is not a new thing now. It is known to the everyday regular passengers of those trains that these mail and passenger trains carry these logs to the desired ?unauthorised stations? elsewhere between Rangapara and Rangiya junctions causing untold inconvenience to the passengers Particularly in the mail train and passenger train while entering Dhekiajuli and Hugrajuli, one will see dozens of youngmen waiting eagerly near the railway tracks at their ?unauthorised stations? to load the valuable logs cut in various sizes. Then the trains are stopped and the logs are loaded almost in all the compartments right from the engine to the last bogie taking almost half-an-hour to an hour and thus ignoring the passengers? interest boarding those trains!
All these unauthorised activities are going on everyday and the railway authority has been maintaining a ?mysterious silence? over it. The railway police are on symbolic duty. The loading and unloading of illegally carried logs by a section of anti-social elements in the trains have now become so common to them that they do not know any thing about the elements engaged in this business. To say the bitter truth the railway itself has been helping the ?unemployed youths? to have engaged in this kind of ?self-employment?. In this way, the NF railway in the recent times is encouraging deforestation.
Another striking feature of ?Rangapara-Rangiya? train episode is that the Railway department is fast losing its heavy revenues everyday. As this correspondent in recent times boarded a ?mail train? running in between Lakhimpur and Alipurduar with a ?ticket? he saw the activity of a train-ticket examiner? (TTE) who was busy in collecting Rs 10, 5, 20 etc from the ticketless passengers. Since the train fare from Udalguri to Harisinga (20 km distance) is Rs 18 in the mail train, the passengers going to Harisinga which is just a 20 minute journey, do not bother to buy the ?costly ticket? but were seen interested to entertain the TTE with a 5 or 10 rupee note.
Even though the present Railway Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav introduced Rs 250 as fine instead of Rs 50 as a ?penalty fee? to the ticketless passengers, but the railway Ministers? initiatives seemed to be unknown and ?a pretty wicked idea? to the cunning TTEs who find pleasure to relieve the ticketless passengers only with a ?nominal charge? for the ticketless journey. If the concerned railway department does not take timely proper initiative to check this type of easy flowing corruption, the department will always a incur heavy loss.