Union minister for railways Ram Vilas Paswan was placed in the dock yesterday with the Delhi high court expressing its displeasure over his practice of issuing thousands of railway passes from his discretionary quota. This prompted the ministry to state before the court that it was trying to regulate such passes issued by Paswan.
A division bench comprising Justice Arun Kumar and Justice Dalveer Bhandari expressed concern that thousands of passes were issued last year, and in none of the cases the reason for issuing them was given. The court came down heavily on the railway ministry for the unregulated and unreasoned issuance of cheque passes (discretionary travel passes) by the ministers.
Counsel for the ministry Ramji Srinivasan said the ministry itself was thinking of evolving a system to regulate issuance of such passes. The ministry would file an affidavit in this regard within two weeks, he said. Srinivasan said these passes had been issued as a tradition and gave a break-up before the court. He said over 6,000 passes were issued during 1991-95 (when C K Jaffer Sharief was the minister) and eight months earlier over 2,700 cheque passes were issued. We are in the process of preparing a guideline for complimentary passes to be followed by the railway minister, Srinivasan said.
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The case would come up for further hearing on September 17.
The bench also questioned the validity of the April 30, 1997, order of the railway ministry extending platinum pass facility to the retired railway board members and their families and allowing them to avail unlimited travels in first class AC.
Srinivasan said persons holding platinum cards were very few compared to 17 lakh railway employees who were given free travel facilities.
A petition filed by Rekha Bhasin had alleged that due to issuance of platinum passes, presence of touts and limited reservation booking days, common travellers were suffering. Srinivasan said due to the concessional fare tickets given to various categories of persons including students, freedom fighters, presidents medal winners and others, the railway has to bear a burden of Rs 267 crore on an average every year.
However, the financial burden due to the cheque passes were negligible as they amounted to 1 per cent of the total burden on the railways, he said.