Late running of trains at Bagaha forcing people to travel by bus

Speed Post News Network

Bagaha : Almost all trains especially passengers on 150 km long Narakatiaganj – Gorakhapur route under East Central rail (ECR), Hajipur), Bihar, and North Eastern Railways (NER), Gorakhapur, UP, are runing one to five hours late now-a-days. Sometimes few trains on this route are suddenly cancelled causing great hardship to the passengers.

Eight to ten pairs express trains run on this route daily besides a dozen of goods trains. The express trains are running inordinately late but are never cancelled. But four passenger trains out of six pairs, which run on the section, were suddenly cancelled on March 21, 2018. When the passengers sought to know the cause behind cancellation of these trains, Station Superintendent, Bagaha Railway Station, Jai Kumar Srivastava, said that some electrification work was in progress on the section from Khadda to Captainganj railway stations.

But, the passengers say that ever since enforcement of the new timetable in October, 2016, trains on this route were ruuning late resulting in decline in number of passengers from around 5,000 to 3,000 daily at Bagaha railway station causing loss of revenue to the  railways. Rail sources said that compared to a daily revenue of Rs 40,000 in February 2017, the revenue of Bagaha Railway Station had come down Rs 25,000 daily in February 2018.

Sources said that many people now prefer to travel by buses incurring higher travel cost.  Bhola Prasad Srivastava, an octogenarian of Bagaha, said that when the trains were running on coal on this route, they ran on time and the people used to match their watches with the arrival of trains. D N Tiwari, an ex-president of Bagaha Bar association, said that the passengers were now fed up with late runing of trains. Deep Narain Prasad, President of Tharu Welfare Federation, West Champaran, said that the local BJP MPs were yet to take up the issue of late running of trains with the Railway Ministry.

Sources said one of the cause of late running of trains was gross indiscipline among personnel of Narakatiaganj and Gorakhpur Junctions Locoshed, who never release power on time.