Services stalled, Rlys suffered Rs 2,400-cr loss

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, November 22

As the train services were disrupted many a time due to the farmers’ protests against the farm laws across Punjab, the Northern Railways suffered losses of over Rs 2,400 crore in both passenger and goods revenue.

The disruptions affected both outward and inward loading in Punjab and also passenger traffic. As trains were cancelled, the customers switched to other modes of transportation. “Every disruption causes revenue loss to the Railways. We are assessing the loss as so many things are taken into consideration,” said Northern Railway General Manager Ashutosh Gangal.

On December 25 last year, the Railways said it had suffered a loss of Rs 2,400 crore, including in passenger revenue. But the services continued to be disrupted even after that. Initially, train services in Punjab were suspended from September 24 last year when farmers started their “rail rook” agitation. Though goods trains resumed briefly after farmer unions on October 21 announced exempting those from the stir, the Railways suspended them again, saying farmers were still blocking the tracks. The train services were resumed nearly after two months in November.

During the period, goods trains had not entered Punjab, leading to shortage of essential goods, including fertilisers needed for wheat sowing and coal supplies for thermal plants. Due to rail obstructions in October last year, the industry in Chandigarh and Punjab grappled with raw material shortage, especially primary steel. Such was the scenario that steel companies decided to dispatch rake load of steel materials to the Ballabgarh (BVH) railway station of Faridabad in Haryana instead of Punjab.

Even recently, the Railways incurred heavy losses due to cancelled or delayed trains in the last four protests on August 20, September 27, October 4 and October 18. In normal situations, full refund is issued if train is cancelled or delayed for over three hours.

Steel firms paid extra

• Last year, steel companies dispatched rake load of steel materials to Ballabgarh railway station in Faridabad
• The industry shelled out Rs1,500 per tonne extra in terms of additional transportation cost to bring the raw material from Ballabhgarh to their manufacturing unit by road

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