Tickets for Ganpati special trains sold online due to error

Commuters who were waiting to book train tickets for the Ganpati festival had to return empty-handed as the booking for the special Ganpati trains, which was supposed to start online at 8am on July 20, began 50 minutes before time, creating confusion and causing commuters to allege fraud.

About 135 tickets were booked for three dates before 8 am for Train No 09007 to be run between Mumbai Central-Thivim via Konkan Railway from August 6. Railways has initiated action against those responsible for the error and chargesheeted a railway employee.

Initially, it was suspected the tickets had been booked by counterfeit software. The train is a tri-weekly special for Konkan. The WR is running Ganpati special trains (six trains) and Konkan Railway would be running three trains during the upcoming Ganpati festival. The booking dates for these was July 20, 2018. The data entry is done by the Mumbai Passenger Reservation System at CSMT.

A senior railway official said as per the procedure, at the time of feeding in the details of the trains the opening date entered in the system for eight trains was 20.7.2018. However, database staff erroneously entered the opening date for Train No.09007 as 20.7.2017, instead of 20.7.2018.

Because of the error, the booking for this train started immediately at 7.10am. However, the first ticket was booked at 7.21 am.

“A total of 135 tickets were booked before 8am on 20.7.2018 for this train. All these tickets were booked through internet (online) for various dates of journey. Thirteen tickets were booked for a journey on 8.9.2018; 119 tickets for journey on 10.9.2018 and 3 tickets for journey on 15.9.2018,” said Sunil Udasi, CPRO, CR.

“It was a mistake of the railways and we do not intend to cancel the tickets, as it will inconvenience those genuine passengers,” a CR official said.

The WR have also planned an additional stoppages for special trains during Ganpati festival – 2018. All the down trains no 09001, 09009, 09011, 09007, 09418, 09416 will halt at Rajapur and Vaibhavwadi Road. Howevr, all up trains no 09002, 09010, 09008, 09417 and 09415 will halt at Vaibhavwadi and Rajapur road.