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Magistrate recalls his own inquiry into railway VIP quota

Expressing regret at the inquiry, the magistrate clarified in his letter that the man who was not given reservation under the VIP quota was not a relative of the Chief Justice.

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In a move that railway officials say has been unprecedented, a special railway magistrate in Bilaspur, Chattisgarh has called back his inquiry into why a man – supposedly a relative of the Chief Justice of Chattisgarh high court, though this turned out to be untrue – was not given reservation under the VIP quota on a Bilaspur-Patna train by South East Central Railway officials. (SECR)

Bilaspur special railway magistrate Vikram Pratam Chandra sent the letter dated April 24 – calling back his own inquiry – to Ravish Kumar Singh, senior divisional commercial manager of Bilaspur division while a copy was marked to the registrar-general of the Chattisgarh HC.

Expressing regret at the inquiry, the magistrate clarified in his letter that the man who was not given reservation under the VIP quota was not a relative of the Chief Justice. Magistrate Chandra also stated in the letter that he did not have any instructions form the HC to conduct an inquiry into the matter. "It (the direction for inquiry) is recalled immediately and you need not required (sic) to take any further action", the magistrate's letter concludes.

According to officials, it all started after SECR was unable to give reservation to one out of a group of five persons who had submitted requests – as part of two separate tickets – to get their tickets confirmed under the VIP quota, also called Emergency Quota (EQ) by the railways. Magistrate Chandra had then ordered an inquiry into the matter.

For officials at SECR, the closure of the issue is a welcome relief because railway officials who spoke to dna on condition of anonymity agreed that over the past one year, SECR had tried to ensure the VIP quota was progressively reduced in trains.

"We have been constantly analysing the emergency quota lists and have been able to reduce the number of such seats in trains by almost 40%. This in turn has greatly helped common people who otherwise find themselves in the waiting list right from the time they book the tickets – sometimes two to four months in advance – to the time the train departs on its journey. Now strictly speaking, passengers have a 40% better chance of reserved seats," said a senior railway official.

SECR has around 400 VIP seats each day in various trains that originate and pass through the zone's three divisions at Bilaspur, Nagpur and Raipur.

Not such an Emergency Quota after all:
In order to facilitate travel for people who had to proceed on a journey due to an emergency – like illness, death, marriage, government transfer – the railway sets aside some seats in all classes of each train to be released a few hours before the train's reservation charts are prepared. The tickets confirmed under the EQ have HO (Head Office) written beside them in the reservation chart. However, with the passage of time, railway officials say, the EQ has been overrun by requests from politicians, journalists, bureaucrats and the like. "Unfortunately, from EQ, the list can now actually be called VIP quota and the purpose has been defeated," said a senior railway official.

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