Rush hour at railway station

CHANDIGARH: With summer vacations on, there is a mad rush for rail tickets and authorities have failed to provide adequate counters to accommodate the growing crowd of passengers.
There are six counters in reservation area, but only three of them are functional. Due to which, people have to wait in long queues for their turn to get their seats reserved.Even after standing for hours most of them don’t get tickets and due to less number of trains, less capacity as compared to the requirement.
Everyday a large number of people come to get reservation in Sadbhavna Express Lucknow, but most of the times they get disappointed due to less capacity and more number of travellers. Sadbhavna Express has five sleepers, two second AC, two AC 3-Tier, six general coach and two SLR but this is not sufficient as per the requirement.
“As there is a long waiting list for Sadbhavna Express, we have decided to attach four additional coaches to the train,” said a railway official.
There are two summer special trains, Chandigarh-Bandra train and Chandigarh-Dibrugarh, which run twice in a week.
During summer vacations, a lot of people want to visit Mumbai, but they face reservation problem as the number of coaches is less. This train has seven sleepers, one second AC, six general coaches and two SLR. General coaches have 108 seats which is much less as compared to the demand.
Talking about the long waiting list, station superintendent Parveen Kumar said, “We are planning to add some more coaches to the summer special trains to cope with the situation.” When asked about non-functional counters, he said, “Only three booths are set up for working at present, others are for future use.”
Tapesswar Das, a resident of Sector 26, Panchkula, said, “I’ve been standing in the queue since 8am and got my reservation confirmed only at 1pm, when my turn at the counter came. I did my booking weeks ago and had come today just to get the reservation confirmed.”
“I was standing in the queue for the past two hours to get my seat reserved in Garib Rath, but the train is full,” said Abhimanyu Bhagat, a resident of Chandigarh.
For the online reservation, advance booking needs to be done at least three months before the trip, something which isn’t possible in today’s fast world.