Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai)

Railway pass is now available online too

- Eeshanpriy­a MS and Aroosa Ahmed

MUMBAI: The state government on Thursday made available online a facility to get season ticket for railway travel from August 15.

Citizens who are fully vaccinated and have completed 14 days after their second dose can get the e-pass through a link that can be accessed on all browsers – http:// epassmsdma.mahait.org. Once applicants upload their documents and these are verified, an e-pass will be generated on the weblink. The e-pass needs to be saved on the applicants’ mobile phones, and produced at ticket counters to get the monthly railway pass.

The offline verificati­on process will still continue at 53 railway stations in the city, where Brihanmumb­ai Municipal Corporatio­n (BMC) has set up help desks, and at 109 railway stations in the Mumbai Metropolit­an Region. However, those who apply online, do not need to separately do the verificati­on process offline at railway stations, and can directly avail the railway pass at ticket counters. Tickets will be issued by the railway authoritie­s. Meanwhile, on Thursday, the second day of issuing monthly railway passes, 23,724 monthly railway passes were issued to passengers till 6pm. Of these, 17,775 were issued by the Central Railway (CR) and 5,949 by the Western Railway (WR).

On the Central Railway, the highest number of passes was issued from Dombivli (1,033) on the second consecutiv­e day. Similarly, on the WR, the maximum number of passes was issued from Borivli (496). Twelve air-conditione­d (AC) local train passes, 4,105 second class passes and 638 first class passes were issued by the WR on Thursday till 5pm.

Authoritie­s have stated that the number of passengers is fewer than anticipate­d. “The possibilit­y of many passengers not being fully vaccinated or the 14-day gap could be the reason,” said a senior railway official. A total of 34,353 monthly suburban railway passes were issued to passengers on day one on Wednesday. The CR had issued 22,689 monthly passes, while the WR issued 11,664.

The state’s MAHA-IT, Maharashtr­a Knowledge Innovation Society and a couple of startups, played an active role under relief and rehabilita­tion department’s principal secretary Aseem Kumar Gupta to roll out the portal. “We got in touch with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare for integratio­n of our portal with CO-WIN for verificati­on of details related to vaccinated people. After the announceme­nt by chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday, all procedures were completed in just two days,” said an official from the relief and rehabilita­tion department. The department has reportedly spent around ₹3 lakh to activate the system.

The official said that the state was mulling the idea of using the universal pass for entry for train, air travel and also for entry at malls, theatres, markets. “It is a foolproof system enabled with blockchain technology integratio­n and nobody can fudge with the data, as was found to have done in earlier systems. Except for the photograph, all other informatio­n is obtained from CO-WIN using applicatio­n programmin­g interface. It is very easy to use as the citizen gets OTP for initial verificati­on within seconds and the Qr-code enabled pass in the next 24 hours,” the official said. The state expects a maximum of 2 million people to register themselves for the universal pass. “Of the 3 million citizens fully vaccinated in MMR, more than 40% are either elderly people or don’t travel by train. Of the remaining, some may go for offline registrati­on,” the official said.

 ?? VIJAY BATE/HT PHOTO ?? Vaccinatio­n drive at the jumbo centre in Dahisar was shut owing to non-availabili­ty of Covid vaccine doses , on Thursday.
VIJAY BATE/HT PHOTO Vaccinatio­n drive at the jumbo centre in Dahisar was shut owing to non-availabili­ty of Covid vaccine doses , on Thursday.

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