Railway extends advance reservation limit to meet revenue target

Ex-railway minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in December 2009, blamed her predecessor Lalu Prasad Yadav for lying about the finances and creating a hype about the Rs one lakh crore reserves which were nowhere there.

Least did she realise that two years later, her successor and TMC leader Dinesh Trivedi would still resort to sleight of hands to helm dwindling revenues.

The ministry has decided to advance the reservation limit to four months from three months currently. This will become effective from March 10. A senior ministry official said the move is being taken up by the ministry on an experimental basis to facilitate the peak season rush.

The move rather seems to be a desperate measure to helm the dwindling finances of railways. By advancing the period, the railways will be able to sell tickets uptill July. This essentially means that the ministry will rake in the revenues that would have actually accrued to the railways in April - beginning of next financial year - in March itself, which is the last month of this financial year. That translates into big figures for the railway ministry. From April 1, 2011 to 31 January 2012, the railway ministry earned Rs13,625 crore from passenger bookings. In the month of January itself, the railway earned Rs2342.38 crore from passenger bookings. So by advancing the period, in the twenty days in March, the railways is likely to get an additional income of Rs 1,500 crore.

The desperation in the ministry seems to be originating from the drastically falling goods earning, which forms the lion’s share in the railways revenue. Till January, the ministry has raked in goods revenues worth Rs56,247 crore. At this pace, it is highly unlikely that the railways will be able to achieve Rs68,620 crore in the remaining two months of the fiscal.

However, there will be no change in case of certain short distance trains like Taj Express and Gomti Express. “The advance reservation period for these trains are 15 days and it will remain unchanged,” a official said. There will also be no change in case of the limit of 360 days for foreign tourists.