Hundreds leave station empty-handed

The struggle for buying railway tickets at the Kamalapur Railway Station (KRS) ahead of Eid and Puja festivals came to an end Tuesday with hundreds of frustrated ticket-seekers left the station empty-handed.
Slow pace of sales at the counters, sudden declaration of closure of selling tickets of particular trains, allegation of black marketing were witnessed by this FE reporter at KRS on the day when the tickets for October 5 were sold.
The railway sold advance tickets for October 1 to 5 from September 26 to 30.
Eid is going to be observed on October 6 while Puja is set to be celebrated from September 30 to October 4.
Sanowar Hossain, a school teacher alleged that his serial in the queue was 50 but when his turn came, the man at the counter told him that all the tickets of Nilsagor Express, a Nilphamari-bound train, have been sold out.
"In the queue, only a few people were seeking Nilsagor tickets, then how it is possible that all the 450 tickets of the train were sold out in just one and a half hours," he said.
Abir Hasan, a buying house official came to the KRS at midnight.
"After standing in the queue for more than 10 hours, the counterman said all tickets for Lalmoni Express have been sold out," he said.
He said a large number of tickets have gone to the black market.
An official at the KRS told the FE requesting anonymity that at best 20 persons could get tickets per hour from every counter of the KRS.
Tickets were sold for 8 hours -- from 9:00am to 5:00pm -- that means only 2,400 persons were able to collect 9,600 tickets from its 15 counters.
Nearly 11,000 tickets were allocated for KRS counters out of the total of 18,500, a BR official said.
He said nearly 1,300-1,400 tickets remained unsold per day most of which went to the hands of black marketeers.  
However, transport operators said demand for tickets is much higher this time as two major festivals are going to be held at a time and official vacations have also fallen at the same period.
Meanwhile, private bus operators said all the tickets for October 1 to 4 have already been sold out.
Private launch operators have started plying their vessels ahead of the festivals to 50 destinations in the southern region.

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