TROUBLE Candidates allegedly misbehaved during trip
BHOPAL: Candidates appearing for the army recruitment drive in Gwalior for the past week have hijacked a train, misbehaved with passengers, vandalised railway property and are also travelling for free, railway officials said. But, no action has been taken against them as railways feared that it will create law and order problem.
On January 11, hundreds of candidates boarded the train meant for passengers of Mukhya Mantri Teerth Darshan Yojna, which was going from Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh to Rameshwaram. When the train entered Guna station, the candidates barged into it and forced the driver to take the train back to Shivpuri, about 100km north. Railway officials said the candidates wanted to take it to Gwalior, but the RPF used mild force to get the train vacated in Shivpuri.
IA Suddiqui, public relation officer, West Central Railways, said, “When the candidates were forced to vacate at Shivpuri, all of them fled from the spot, so no FIR was registered. Our main aim was to ensure the train started back on its route and there was no law and order problem.”
The railways’ problems did not end there as candidates entered into most of the other trains travelling on the route without ticket and even occupied the women’s and AC coaches, creating ruckus. Other passengers were outnumbered and, in most cases, there were too few security men to control the situation, officials said.
Siddiqui said, “It was very difficult for the RPF to control so many people. It is true that they even occupied AC coaches, but tackling them with brute force would have created an ugly situation as there were too many of them and we had to think of the passengers’ safety.”
A resident of Shivpuri, Sunita Agrawal, 42, was travelling alone in the Indore-Amritsar Express. “When the train reached Guna, a large number of young boys entered the coach. The train was jam-packed. They were laughing, abusing and misbehaving with passengers but we were helpless. My two-hour journey to Shivpuri was horrible,” she said.
Direct Army Recruitment, Gwalior, director, Col Manish Chaturvedi said they had written to the railways to introduce some trains especially for the candidates but the request was not looked into. “It is the duty of district administration to make all the arrangements. They invite us to organise the rally. We had written to the railways to run special trains for 15 days so that passengers of other trains don’t have to face trouble. But railways didn’t do anything,” Chaturvedi said.
On why the railway did not run special trains, Siddiqui said, “Due to some communication problem, it could not be worked out …”
However, other railway officials said running a train with 18 bogies costs between ~4.5 to ~6 lakh per day.
“The army told us to take money from the candidates. But it is a normal practice of candidates appearing for such exams not to purchase tickets, and we too look the other way as most candidates are poor,” a railway official said, requesting anonymity. A district administration official, however, blamed both railways and army for the chaos, saying no prior necessary arrangements were made. “Guna is not well connected with Gwalior.
When the army and Railways knew that thousands of candidates would be travelling every day, they should have made necessary arrangements,” said a district administration officer.