[Resolved]  Irctc — My TDR Claim

Address:

Maharashtra

Dear Consumer Forum,

I am a regular traveler / passenger with Indian Railways and mostly book my tickets online.
I want to file a complaint against the Indian Railway for rejecting my TDR application on false grounds.

My ticket details are
PNR no. [protected] Train No. 12102, Travel Date - 27th Nov 2012 From Akola Jn To LTT Mumbai
Four Passengers - Sanjay Sharma (Self) Alka Sharma (My wife) Kalpana Sharma (My Mother) and Pakshalika (My daughter) 8 years.
My case No. is CCR 051212V63949 - I had filed the TDR on 28th Nov 2012

The case in brief is that I had booked a ticket online as above, because an earlier date ticket was not available when I was booking my travel to Akola from Mumbai for Diwali vacations. Then while I was in Akola I got a ticket of earlier date under tatkal and I traveled on that ticket. Due to some problems I could not cancel my above eticket immediately and when I went to cancel it on 26th/27th itself I could not cancel the ticket though it was well before the train time. Hence I had to file the TDR - which as per rule I could do only one after the journey. Then I had to wait for the decision for a month or so. On 20 Dec I got a reply from IRCTC that my TDR was rejected because I had traveled on that date using that ticket. This is too much, how can I travel on that date when I was in Mumbai?

It is a clear case of misuse of my ticket by concerned authorities, who must have marked me & my family on board and allotted that seat to some current passengers who paid good cash since it was a peak season. Had they marked us “no-show” the claim would have gone to RAC passengers which would have caused them a loss of earning which they did not want. So they marked us present on the chart and when I filed for TDR my claim was rejected as the chart showed we all travelled.

I reached Mumbai on 25th and I have all these proofs to establish that my claim was right..

1. A card train ticket booked in TATKAL PNR No. [protected] dt. 24 Nov 2012 Train No. 12106 which has all four passengers mentioned above. The ticket was checked and all o[censored]s are marked present on the ticket by on duty TTE.

2. The Prepaid Taxi Receipt at Dadar Central Station which ferried us home from the station
Receipt NO. ter01a0011806 dt. 25th Nov 2012

3. My car was giving trouble so on 25th Nov I got the battery charged and checked it. On 26th it was towed to the service centre and I have a towing slip dt. 26 Nov 2012 for Rs. 500.

4. On 26th itself I renewed my extended warranty and paid by credit card at Sai Service Borivali (Mumbai) Centre which reflects even in my credit card statement.

5. On 28th I took my mother to SL Raheja Hospital for her scheduled appointment with Dr. Arun Bal. I can furnish that receipt too.

6. My children have attended their schools on all these days.

7. We have our mobile phone bills to establish the fact that all o[censored]s were in Mumbai on these days.

So it is simple how can we be traveling on 27th Nov when we are already in Mumbai? Our tickets were sold which is an act of serious contravention of rules – which has affected us, those travelers who were traveling on RAC tickets and the Indian Railways.

Another issue which I want to bring up here is that Railway Officers don't treat eTicket holders equally with card ticket holders especially when it comes to refund because we don't pay money to railways directly. It's fine, we know that and are prepared for it. But what bothers me is that at many times, the eticket holders become victim and end up losing more money compared to card ticket holders.

Like in the above case, as per the Railways Rules a person should be able to cancel the ticket till the departure of the train and file TDR after that. But you see in my case I was not able to cancel the ticket on 27th, I was getting the message that Chart is prepared at remote location. Had it been a card ticket it could have been cancelled then why is this disparity for the eTicket? What happens if the person has booked the ticket and at last day he finds he can’t travel, then he can’t cancel the ticket in the day time well 8-10 hours in before the train timing. What kind of rule is this. So for Trains originating at Howrah the deadline for ticket cancellation for eTicket holder becomes more than 24 hours, he can never cancel the ticket within 24hours of the train departure time. But for trains originating at Nagpur he can cancel till 2 hours before..then why is there a rule of cancellation till 3 hours train departure for those Howrah trains?

I have more instances when I suffered…

1. The train was more than 8 hours late but still people who had card tickets got refund from the counters and eticket holders were asked to file the TDRs and finally after two months we got the reply that train was not more than 3 hours late as per their records!! This was on[protected] when I was returning from Akola to Mumbai.

2. It even happened once when the route was diverted and once when I was not able to board the train due to the procession as train was packed by the demonstrators traveling.

I am attaching the documents for your reference, please look into the matter and do the needful.

Regards,

SanjaySharma