Railways has realised nearly Rs 50 lakh rpt 50 lakh as penalty from ticketless travellers this month.
A total amount of Rs 48,94,927 has been realised during a a drive against unauthorised journey in trains, a senior Railway Ministry official said.
There were total 16,550 cases of unauthorised journey detected in the fortnight long drive carried out at 13 major stations including Lucknow, Patna, Bhopal, Nagpur, Vijayawada, Chennai, Howrah, Delhi and Pune.
"We have launched a special drive this month to curb ticketless travel at many places and it will continue in the coming months also," he said.
While 10,338 persons were caught travelling without ticket, 2,759 were detected travelling without proper tickets.
Thirty-three persons were also found smoking at no-smoke areas of rail premises during the checks and Rs 4,000 were realised as penalty from them.
The official said the ticket checking drive also aims to prevent leaking of revenue in passenger business.
A large number of ticket checking personnel along with a substantial strength of security personnel from the Railway Protection Force (RPF) have been deployed for the drive.
Zonal Railways have been instructed to strengthen ticket checking activities and check the tickets of passengers by deploying uninformed ticket checking personnel at the gates.
