Visakhapatnam: None of the passengers or their relatives, who died or sustained injuries in the the Kuneru train accident, will be eligible to claim insurance.
The only mistake that they had committed was to book their tickets from railway reservation counters, which don’t offer an accident insurance. The railway ticketing website IRCTC, however, offers Rs 10 lakh accident coverage at a premium of 92 paise.
The ticketing website had tied up with three insurers — ICICI Lombard General Insurance, Royal Sundaram General Insurance and Shriram General Insurance — to provide an accident insurance to passengers.
“Only 82 passengers, who were travelling by the train, had opted for the accident insurance. And no one from the insured persons have got injured or died,” said Royal Sundaram General Insur-ance branch head (Vizag) Balagangadhar Patakamuri who was assigned to assess the Kuneru railway mishap victims.
Speaking to this newspaper, the official said: “As per a rough estimation, only 20-25 per cent passengers used to opt for the travel insurance though it was just about 92 paise and sparing of little time.” He blamed lack of awareness about the scheme or carelessness of the passengers for the poor response to the insurance offer.
Under this scheme, the heirs of the passengers — in case of death — will get Rs 10 lakh while the passenger can avail Rs 10 lakh in case of permanent disability, Rs 7.5 lakh for partial disability, up to Rs 2 lakh for hospitalisation expenses, etc.
Railway officials claim that the ease of dispatching policy bonds to passengers via email is the only reason for extending this facility to those, who booked their tickets through IRCTC.
While 68 per cent of total train tickets are bought online, 32 per cent, who buy the rail ticket through offline mode, mostly comprise senior citizens and those from small towns.
However, the relatives of those, who died in the mishap, have urged the Indian Railways to extend the insurance facility to the offline tickets also.
According to East Coast Railway chief public relations officer J.P Mishra, “An ex-gratia of Rs 2 lakh has been given to the relatives of the deceased, and a compensation of Rs 6 lakh would be released at the earliest as the Railway Claim Tribunal has taken a suo moto cognizance in this incident.”
