The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has been informed that it has discontinued the scheme of providing compensation to passengers for delays in private trains for the past five years.
This information was received in response to a request filed by news agency PTI under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
IRCTC was established by the Ministry of Railways with the basic objective of operating all the catering and tourism activities of the Railways and currently handles the booking of tickets and private trains.
According to IRCTC, under this scheme, Rs 26 lakh has been given as compensation to passengers from October 4, 2019 to February 16, 2024.
According to the information, in the year 2023-24 alone, a compensation of Rs 15.65 lakh was given to the passengers.
IRCTC, in response to an RTI, said, “The scheme providing compensation in case of delay or operation of private trains has been discontinued from February 15, 2024.”
The Corporation declined to disclose the reasons for the move, saying it was confidential.
According to the RTI response, IRCTC operates two Tejas trains — one from New Delhi to Lucknow (from October 4, 2019) and the other from Ahmedabad to Mumbai (from January 17, 2020).
The reason for paying the compensation to the passengers was to attract them towards these trains, which was part of the advertising, he said.
A compensation of Rs 1.78 lakh was given in 2019-20, nil in 2020-21, Rs 96,000 in 2021-22, Rs 7.74 lakh in 2022-23 and Rs 15.65 lakh in 2023-20. 24, given to passengers. said in an RTI reply.
Regarding the amount of compensation given to the passenger in case of train delay, it said that Rs 100 is given to the passenger for a delay of 60 to 120 minutes and R250 is given for a delay of 120 to 240 minutes.
According to IRCTC, in case of train cancellation, the passengers are refunded the full fare and in case of delay, food and water are provided to the passengers.
Source link