Advance tickets sold out at many counters

Thousands of people had thronged the counters of Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) depots and railway stations since Saturday night to take advance tickets for going home before the Eid-ul-Fitr, although the ticket sale started on Sunday morning.          
Yearning of many of those in the scrambles for the annual get-together with their near and dear ones on the occasion, however, suffered an initial knock.
A spot account of the scenes says many of the ticket aspirants returned frustrated as Bangladesh Railway and BRTC operators said the tickets had been sold out.
A section of BRTC ticket aspirants told the FE correspondent that tickets for July 24, 25 and 27 had been sold out by Sunday noon.
The condition was the worst at Kamalapur Railway Station as people standing in the queues were nearly ten times higher than the allotted tickets, officials said.
The BR authorities are selling advance tickets from July 20 to 24 for the trips on July 24-28.
Murtoza Hasan, an assistant merchandiser of a garment-buying house, told the FE that he had stood in the queue for tickets since Sunday night.
"My serial was 122. The ticket seller told me at 11am that all allotted tickets for Rangpur Express (Dhaka-Rangpur) had been sold out," he said.
Another ticket-seeker, Md Shafiar Rahman, a private bank official, was in the queue for air-conditioned (AC) compartment tickets at the counter no-5 and his serial was 48 in the line.
"It was just 10.15am when my turn came and the ticketing manager said AC tickets for July 24 of Mahanagar Provati and Mahanagar Godhuli were sold out," he said.
Kamalapur station-manager Khairul Bashir told the FE that a total of 25,000 tickets were being sold at the KRS counters, of them, 18,500 were of intercity trains.
He commented that the number of ticket aspirants was more than the seats available, like in the yesteryears.
A Kamalapur station official said the situation would be same as was in the previous year, as no notable change was seen in the railway communication system.
"BR's passenger-carrying capacity remained unchanged against a steady rise in the demand for railway communications," he said, underlining the urgency of upgrading and expanding the hugely popular mode of public transport.
"Ahead of Eid, around one million people will be able to travel by 43 trains, of which 29 run on intercity routes and 14 are mail trains that operate daily from Dhaka to different districts. Last year a total of 42 trains moved to and from Dhaka," he said.
He also said BR was going to introduce three special intercity trains that would run on the Dhaka-Dewanganj-Dhaka, Dhaka-Parbatipur-Dhaka and Dhaka-Khulna-Dhaka routes on July 26, 27 and 28.
"The demand for BR's tickets is nearly 1.0 million against its capacity of only 0.1 million," he added.
However, hundreds of people were seen securing their place on the queue on Sunday afternoon at KRS to book tickets for July 25. This round of ticket sale will begin this (Monday) morning.
However, if the new Sawal moon is not sighted on July 28, tickets for July 29 would be sold after evening, BR officials said.
On the other side of the ticketing rumpus, tickets of BRTC buses for July 24, 25, and 27, especially for long routes, had run out before noon on the first day.
Atiqul Islam Mithu, a motor mechanic, came to the BRTC depot at Motijheel to buy tickets for July 24 or 25 to go to Chandpur. Islam said he had been standing in the queue since 'Sehri' time. At 12.30pm the counter manager told him that tickets for July 24 to 27 were all sold out.
Like him, thousands of ticket aspirants had the same experience at the Kalyanpur BRTC depot.
Many of them claimed that a significant portion of tickets had been handed over to black-marketeers.
The BRTC advance tickets are being sold at Motijheel, Gazipur, Joarsahara, Uthali, Naraynaganj, Double-decker and Kolyanpur depots of the state-run transport line.
And the 'Eid Special Service' is beginning today (Monday). It would continue for three days after Eid, BRTC officials said.