Ambala ticket collector sets record, collects ₹1.56 crore fine from ticketless passengers in a year

Ticket collector (TC) Simaranjit Singh Walia of Ambala division has collected more than ₹1

Ticket collector (TC) Simaranjit Singh Walia of Ambala division has collected more than ₹1.5 crore in fine payments from ticketless passengers in the 2021-22 financial year 2021-22, railway officials said on Sunday.

Ambala TC Simaranjit Singh Walia collected ₹1.56 crore as fine from ticketless passengers in the 2021-22 financial year. (HT File)

The division has earned a record ₹48.52 crore from ticket checking in the same period.

Divisional railway manager (DRM) Gurinder Mohan Singh said Walia is the first member of Northern Railway’s ticket checking staff to have raked in such a massive amount in a financial year. In fact, he brought in the ₹1.56 crore for Ambala Division in nine months, as trains remained disrupted for the first three months of the financial year following the second wave of Covid.

Deputy chief ticket inspector, Ambala, Walia caught 27,440 ticketless passengers, averaging 101 cases daily. For the uninitiated, ticketless passengers refer to those without a valid ticket for the compartment they are travelling in, and includes, for example, someone travelling in a first-class compartment on a second-class ticket, an official statement read.