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The Ministry of Railways has transferred General Manager South Western Railway, Hubli, G.L. Pant, sent on leave, Chief Commercial Manager K.B.N. Das of South Western Railway, Hubli, Chief Commercial Manager of West Central Railway, Jabalpur, Radhacharan and Adviser (Vigilance), Railway Board, Shiv Kumar. In addition, Executive Director, Traffic Transportation, Railway Board V.K. Roy, who is charged with monitoring of the freight traffic, has been transferred. This follows large scale detection of overloading of freight traffic by 2885.95 tonnes in excess of the rated capacity resulting in undercharging and defrauding the Public Exchequer in surprise inspections on September 27, 2004. Overloading is also hazardous to safety of rail services.
Added to these, six officials have been suspended. They are : Asstt. Operations Manager, West Central Railway, Jabalpur, D.P. Srivastava, Chief Controller, West Central Railway, Jabalpur, Ishrat Patel, Station Manager, Katni, Murwari, F.S. Chauhan, Senior Godown Clerk, Murwari, S.S. Thakur and Jintendra Sharma, Murwari.
All those transferred and suspended are suspected to be conniving in sustaining overloading, leakages of revenues through undercharging and defrauding the Central Public Exchequer.
Of the total detected overloading, 696 tonnes were by M/s Samrudha Overseas. Indian Railways have black listed this firm, as a sequel to such malpractices.
A penalty of Rs. 1 crore has been imposed on the overloaded commodities.
The large scale overloading was in coal and iron. The concerned Ministries of Coal, Mines and Shipping have been informed. Besides, the Finance Ministry has been apprised of massive losses of revenues from violation of central excise, sales tax, royalty and income-tax by the consigners and consignees.
All the Zonal Railways have been directed to instal 150-200 new weighment bridges besides putting the existing ones in order within a short time frame.
The nationwide campaign for containing leakages of revenue will be sustained and surprise inspections carried out to improve revenues and obviate hike in freight and fare rates.
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