Southern Railways uncovers emergency quota reservation allotment fraud

Kochi: The Southern Railways has unearthed a major fraud in allotment of reservation under emergency quota at the Ernakulam in Thiruvananthapuram division. The reservation under emergency quota were being allotted in Ernakulam by Railway staff without sanction from authorised officers of the Southern Railway, an internal probe has revealed.

Worse still, the EQs were allotted to passengers on the basis of fictitious phone numbers. According to Southern Railway officials, Senior Divisional Commercial Manager, Trivandrum, conducted surprise check into repeated complaints of malpractices and irregularities in EQ allotment at Ernakulam in Trivandrum Division.

"On a surprise check, it was discovered that the complaints were true and that there were serious irregularities in allotment of EQ at Ernakulam, leading to misuse of EQ with collusion of some insiders. It was found that the EQ was being allotted irregularly without any sanction from the authorised officer by the staff who were not authorized to do so,"an official release said here.

Moreover, when random checks were conducted by trying to contact the passengers on their mobile numbers provided in EQ application, it was discovered that many of them were fictitious phone numbers.

" Many others were allotted seats from EQ, were not even entitled for such allotment from EQ. Even the new format prescribed by Southern Railway, Headquarter office was not being followed. No written records were being kept for a majority of cases, which has confirmed large scale malpractices in the allotment of EQ at Ernakulam."