M F AHMAD
Daltonganj, June 30: Mismanagement, confusion and chaos filled the intervening night of Thursday /Friday at platform number 1 of the Daltonganj railway station under ECR (East Central Railway) Dhanbad division.
First of all, the coach position of the Ranchi-Delhi Rajdhani express train was wrongly displayed on the coach indicator which led to a great confusion and commotion among the Delhi-bound passengers to run on the platform to locate their coach on the arrival of this train.
They ran and abused the railway officials for the mess they were so pushed in. Rajdhani express train has a 2-minute stoppage but last night it had an over-stoppage just to ease the movement of the harassed passengers.
Passengers and their relatives who came to see them off were pretty angry. The error was done at the coach announcement and its display desk which is outsourced.
A similar chaos was seen with the Tata-Jamnu Tawi express train at the Daltonganj railway station platform number 1 when its loco pilot pulled the coaches far ahead of what the coach indicator suggested.
B3 coach was pulled up two coaches ahead by the loco pilots as a result of which men, women, children and sick all had to run on the platform to get into the right coach.
This pulling ahead from the suggested spot as per the version of the coach indicator affected each and every coach that caused enormous inconvenience and discomfort to the passengers.
Railway sources said it is the sheer mistake of the loco pilot to overlook or ignore the rightful positioning of the coaches as suggested by the coach indicator.
Again one of the two doors of the B3 coach that lie across the platform was locked and the coach attendant was nowhere around.
Luckily, one passenger from inside came to the washbasin of the coach who was told to open the locked door by an Army Major but the inside passenger was not that helpful to open the door and by the time the locked door was opened by the inside passenger, the train began to move.
Daltonganj railway station has around one and a half dozen coolies coming from the minority community and as Bakrid was on Thursday there was no coolie around at the platform on Thursday /Friday night.
The mismanagement did not end there. Dozen of the passengers were sleeping right on the staircases leaving hardly any space for other passengers to move onto the platform.
The GRP and the RPF personnel did see passengers sleeping on the staircases but none of them intervened to clear the staircases for the incoming and outgoing passengers.
Worse was not yet over as passengers were found sitting in a roundabout in the circulation area which is exclusively for car parking.
A family which came by car had to park its car with great difficulties as passengers were squatting down on the ground in the circulation area.
A railway official of the Daltonganj railway station was broadly apprised of last night’s chaos, confusion and mismanagement at platform number 1 and has assured to look into the matter quite seriously.
