Summer rush chokes Tirupati railway station

Tirupati: With the summer vacation drawing to a close, especially to the school-going children, the temple city of Tirupati has been witnessing a peak in the pilgrim crowd. For the past several days, the transit points have been bustling with activity as many people are making last minute plans to visit the hill shrine and other temples in Tirupati.

This unprecedented rush has reached saturation stage and the railway station was chock-a-block with every inch filled to its capacity and the crowd finding it difficult to find space even to stand.

Passengers find it very difficult to find a place in any train with all the trains having huge waiting lists and running with full capacity of 24 bogies leaving no provision to even provide additional bogies. For instance, presently Narayanadri express running between Tirupati–Secunderabad was having a waiting list between 150–200.

As they could not find reserved accommodation, passengers have been forced to buy general tickets to find their luck in general compartments making long queue lines at ticket counters. South Central Railway (SCR) has been running three special trains to clear extra rush between Kakinada–Tirupati–Kacheguda and two more trains between Tirupati and Kakinada as there was heavy rush towards Vijayawada route, said the Station Manager M Subodh Mithra.

Though these trains were coming to the rescue of passengers to some extent, most of them have been preferring regular trains than special trains forcing increased ticket sales at general counters. During normal days, the station earns Rs 25 lakh through sale of general tickets on an average which goes to Rs 35 lakh during peak days.

This year from May 1-10, station earned Rs 2.6 crore whereas it has gone up further a little over Rs 3 crore during May 11-20 period. In the same period, 3.18 lakh passengers travelled in general compartments. In the last three days, general traffic fetched SCR a sum of Rs 1.3 crore with Sunday itself recorded a revenue of Rs 48.07 lakh. Further, 44,000 passengers travelled in general compartments on Sunday alone.

Meanwhile, station Director Kuppala Satyanarayana and Station Manager M Subodh Mithra have been constantly monitoring the rush situation and taking steps accordingly. Especially in the evening hours they were closely watching the rush and allotting the trains to different platforms so that the rush will scatter to different places which will avoid stampede and other problems.

Subodh Mithra told The Hans India that additional forces of GRP and RPF have been deployed from other places in view of the heavy influx of passengers at Tirupati station. In all, 29 CCTV cameras have been working and the officers concerned were taking stock of every aspect regarding security at the station. He added that they were ensuring drinking water in all the taps, water facility in washroom and even instructed the hotel authorities housed at the station to keep food ready to meet the increasing demand.

All the officers were maintaining a close whistle in view of the summer rush which is expected to continue till mid-June, he maintained. However, the auto-rickshaw drivers and the small eateries opposite railway station were the happy lot as they could squeeze the purse of the passengers coming from across the country. In the absence of regular check on the eateries, they were charging exorbitant prices for poor quality of food, complains many pilgrims.

The pre-paid auto/taxi counter before the main entrance of the station was seen without any personnel during most of the day, there was no control over autos, who were charging to their will and arguing with passengers.