Currently, the railway police takes care of escorting local trains at night but the RPF believes that it can add its might once a good chunk of the 16,500 new RPF recruits join the apparatus at both Central and Western Railways.
The Mumbai railway police, short-staffed like their Railway Protection Force counterpart, have begun pasting posters outside some of the ladies coaches of Central Railway trains informing women of the guaranteed presence of cops in such coaches through the night. The posters cover one first-class and one general ladies coach and is the latest gamble of the security apparatus in the city to increase women's safety on the city's suburban system.
The idea is to get women to travel in one or at best two coaches of a train at night so that the railway police as well as the RPF can make do with two constables as armed escorts to cover an entire local train. Currently, the railway police takes care of escorting local trains at night but the RPF believes that it can add its might once a good chunk of the 16,500 new RPF recruits join the apparatus at both Central and Western Railways.
The railway police, which falls under the state government, is just as short-staffed and gets pulled up fare more than the RPF for crime that takes place on the trains since law and order is primarily a state subject. Calls made to railway police commissioner Madhukar Pandey and deputy commissioner Rupali Ambure about the posters- and the line of thought behind pasting them- went unanswered.
Earlier, top railway authorities like CR general manager SK Sood, WR general manager GC Agarwal and WR divisional railway manager Shailendra Kumar were of the view that having women board the ladies coaches at both ends of the train- and placing a constable in each of them- was a better option to tide over the security manpower crunch.
At the moment, on Central Railway, every 12-coach train has 1,161 seats of which 245 seats are reserved for women, of which 24 are in the first class ladies compartments. In terms of percentage, it is 21 %. As far as first class seats for ladies is concerned, the percentage is a paltry 2 %.
In a 9-coach train, 139 seats out of 817 seats are reserved for women, or 17 % of the train. Of these 13 are first class seats for ladies, the percentage once again being a minuscule one %. On WR, the 80 rakes in its fleet comprise a total of 966 coaches. Of this 242 coaches have some or the whole part of it as a ladies section. In percentage terms it is 25 % but WR officials said the figure should be closer to 22 % of all seats on WR being reserved for women. A back-of-the-envelope estimate of women passengers on WR's suburban system puts the number at around 17 %.
The RPF unit of CR's Mumbai division has a sanctioned strength of 2,546 personnel but it has only 1,628 personnel on its rolls, a vacancy of 918 personnel. In fact, the vacancy in the constabulary front- the first line of security – is a whopping 689 with just 661 constables on the rolls against a sanctioned strength of 1,350.
The RPF unit of WR's Mumbai division fares just as badly. The unit has a sanctioned strength of 2,016 but has only 1,215 personnel on its rolls, a shortfall of 801 personnel which gets even more problematic because of the need for weekly-offs as well as sick leaves. Of the 16,500 new recruits, 550 will be sanctioned for WR's Mumbai division.
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