Tatanagar railway station has become the hub of unauthorised travel agents

Jamshedpur, May 24: Try buying train tickets for Bangalore, Pune, Delhi, or any other destination, where school passouts are flocking for college admission, for the next one month and chances are that you will return home empty-handed.

But don?t fret if you are ready to shell out more money. Unauthorised travel agents are at your service to get you that all-cherished ticket. And it can come for anything between an additional charge of Rs 50 and Rs 500, depending on the choice of your train and the coach.

Despite frequent promises by the railway authorities for fair play at the reservation counter, unauthorised agents are having a field day at the Tatanagar railway station, particularly when young graduates are hastily planning trips to other states for higher studies.

?Why are you worried about reservation? We have good contacts with senior officials and can give you the ticket the day you want it. Just be ready to dish out some extra money,? one of the unauthorised agents assured this correspondent posing as a customer for the Puri-New Delhi Purushottam Super Fast Express on May 27. For a confirmed reservation in the sleeper class of an express train, he informed, a traveller had to cough up Rs 50 more per ticket, while the same coach in a superfast train will cost Rs 100 more.

?In case we do not manage to confirm a seat by the time the passenger chart is published, we contact the ticket examiner and get the ticket confirmed by paying him a part of our share. In that case, we charge the customer Rs 200 more per ticket as about 80 per cent of our commission is lapped up by the ticket examiner,? he further said.

?But we have managed to hang on, if not claw our way back in, thanks to the greedy railway officials. There are about 30 of us at the Tatanagar railway station and due to the stiff competition we sometimes even work on a no-profit-no-loss basis,? he said.

Deputy superintendent (commercial) M. Malik, however, ruled out the possibilities of confirming tickets by unfair means. However, another officer, on condition of anonymity, pointed out that it is even possible to confirm a ticket hours before the journey with the help of the ticket examiner or the officials of the divisional railway manager?s office. ?This will never end,? he said.