Bhubaneswar, Jan. 13: The environment around the Bhubaneswar railway station will improve drastically if the current anti-spitting and littering campaign of the East Coast Railway (ECoR) succeeds.

ECoR is planning to raise the fine for spitting or littering at the Bhubaneswar railway station from the present Rs 100 to Rs 200.

The two-fold increase in the fine structure became necessary as the authorities discovered that people were not paying any heed to the restrictions and polluting the environment of the railway station.

According to the rules of the Indian Railways, the authorities can collect a fine of any amount between Rs 100 and Rs 500 for such acts, with the maximum fine amount being in A1 class railway stations. In Odisha, Bhubaneswar and Puri railway stations belong to the A1 category.

“Within a week, we are going to raise the fine to Rs 200 for Bhubaneswar and Puri. In case of smaller stations such as Cuttack, Bhadrak, and Jajpur-Keonjhar Road (A class), the new fine will be Rs 100. The fine will be Rs 60 for all other stations according to the new fine structure, so that people think twice before polluting the environment,’’ Rabi Narayan Mohapatra, chief public relations officer of the ECoR, told The Telegraph.

“The railway officials should have implemented this fine long ago. Apart from maintaining cleanliness at the stations, the tobacco chewers will also learn a good lesson from this as they mostly spit everywhere in the city starting from the shopping malls to even the secretariat,’’ said B. Rudranarayan, who commutes by train everyday.

The ECoR officials have collected Rs 1.28 lakh as fine from 2,040 persons for spitting and littering around stations in various parts of Odisha ever since the campaign started from December 16, 2012.

Hinting at a plan to form special task forces to stop spitting and littering at stations, Mohapatra said that special campaigns would also be carried out in different media to make people aware of the campaign. “We want to make our stations beautiful places so that travellers feel like being at home,’’ he said.

The ECoR authorities have asked all senior divisional commercial managers to depute a special task force to stop spitting and littering on railway premises.