The enquiry office at Ranchi railway station. Picture by Hardeep Singh

Ranchi, Nov. 8: Case 1: A person has made a call to 131, the Ranchi railway enquiry, in the morning to know the status of a particular train. Failing to have a reply, he dials 246 1404. After redialling for the next 10 minutes, a man finally picks up the phone. When asked about the status of the train, pat came the answer: ?There is nobody on the answering machine.?

Case 2: Another person, who called up the enquiry repeatedly for at least 20 minutes, comes to the station himself to know the status of another train. There, too, he finds the man at the enquiry missing. The man, who arrives after a few minutes, answers the queries with a face, not apologetic but reluctant.

Blame it on the technical fault or apathy of the railway staff, this is precisely the picture of the enquiry office at Ranchi railway station of the South Eastern Railway.

The railway authorities claimed to have installed an automatic answering system, which gets connected whenever one dials 131, to get the updated information on a particular train.

Thanks to the apathy of the railway officials, the round-the-clock enquiry system remains either non-functional or unanswered.

This scribe, too, tried to call up the enquiry umpteen numbers of times but failed to get connected even once.

While the railway officials said the enquiry is answered immediately and apart from one or two cases of not answering, it was functioning well, the ground reality remains otherwise.

With the railway authorities turning a blind eye towards the issue, it has increased the bag of woes of the passengers and the residents of the Ranchi division of the South Eastern Railway.

Their requests of a better enquiry service, too, have fallen on deaf ears of the railway officials.

Barring a few exceptional cases in which the enquiry officials actually pick up the phone and reply, maximum phone calls of the residents remain to be answered.

Senior railway officials said the manual enquiry system is in ?perfect order? while the computerised one has developed some ?technical problems? a few days ago but a process is on to ?rectify the fault as soon as possible?.

?I do not think there has been a continuous problem regarding answering the calls at the enquiry. Earlier, it was manned by railway officials but now it has been fully computerised to facilitate the passengers. The calls get automatically connected to the interactive voice response system,? said station manager J. Minz.

Railway officials pointed out that earlier one had to call 131 and get the status of the train through an operator.

But the whole system has been computerised with five parallel lines connected to the interactive voice response system in the station control room. Once somebody calls the number, he or she is automatically connected to any one of the five channels of the interactive voice response system.

The railway officials at the station added that whenever there was such a problem, they made it a point to bring it to the notice of the senior officials.

The technical snag, which had occurred in the system a few days ago, has also been brought to the notice and proper steps ?are being taken? to rectify it, added the railway officials.

N. Marandi, assistant commercial manager of Ranchi railway station, said: ?The problem will be solved soon. We usually take up the matter with higher officials.?