Noel Manuel
Dimapur | July 16
Absence of reservation/cancellation requisition forms at the Dimapur railway station has made scraps of paper valuable and this is causing serious inconvenience to passengers and reservation clerks for some time now.
But this is not the only cause of worry. The actual concern lies in the fact that scraps of paper have been in use for the last two years and the railway authorities in Maligaon have done little to solve the problem.
Dimapur, the second highest revenue earner of the Railways in the Northeast, after Guwahati, caters to approximately 800 reservations in a day. Most of the reservations, according to some sources, come in an incomplete format. Unlike a requisition form that bears all necessary instructions to detail personal information, a plain scrap of paper has to be filled up with the help of guidance.
An incomplete requisition form can cause problems for both the passenger as well as the reservation clerk, says a railway official and adds that lack of adequate information at the time of booking, could deprive victims from compensation, in case of a mishap.
A source in the railways points out that particular mention is made in the indent every quarterly of the need of reservation forms. However, much is left to be desired from railway stores at Pandu and Guwahati.
The claim by some railway officials that insufficient stocks or no stocks could be the reason for the absence of requisition forms does not sound convincing enough. Twenty-four months without requisition forms is proof in itself of neglect by the bigwigs at Maligaon.
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