
Video: Passenger Occupies Man's Confirmed Seat In Sleeper Coach, Railways Responds
He wrote, "My seat is occupied by another passenger. I requested the TTE, Sir, to get my seat vacated, but it still hasn't been cleared."
Watch the video here:
11123 GWL BJU EXPRESS Sleeper Ka hal Genral Se Bhi Kharab Hai
01. Mera seat dusre passenger ke pas occupied hai maine TTE Sir ko request Kiya ki mera seat khali karva dijiye lekin abhi bhi mera seat khali nahi kiya gya hai. @RailMinIndia @narendramodi @RailwayNorthern pic.twitter.com/7zX0khnwBO
— sandipsingh kushwaha (@ksandip_09) August 5, 2025
RailwaySeva, the official customer service handle of Indian Railways, replied to the post and requested the passenger's PNR and mobile number to address the issue.
"We regret the experience you had. Please share your PNR number and mobile no. preferably via DM to enable us to take immediate action. You may also raise your concern directly on http://railmadad.indianrailways.gov.in or dial 139 for speedy redressal," the response read.
We regret the experience you had. Please share your PNR number and mobile no. preferably via DM to enable us to take immediate action.
You may also raise your concern directly on https://t.co/JNjgaq11Jl or dial 139 for speedy redressal. https://t.co/utEzIqAAkm
— RailwaySeva (@RailwaySeva) August 5, 2025
The incident highlights a recurring problem in Indian Railways where passengers with unreserved tickets often occupy reserved compartments, particularly sleepers and even AC coaches, due to overcrowding in general compartments. This leads to discomfort and inconvenience for passengers who have paid for reserved seats.
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Indian Express
an hour ago
- Indian Express
In Maharashtra port, ship waits to be sunk, start new life as artificial reef
AT THE Vijaydurg port, a natural harbour in Maharashtra's coastal Sindhudurg district, an 81-metre-long piece of naval history lies still against the blue of the Arabian Sea, awaiting its second innings. INS Guldar, a decommissioned Navy warship, will soon be deliberately sunk — or 'scuttled' — to breathe new life into its metal bones, transforming it into an artificial reef and an underwater tourist attraction. Though scuttled ships have been used to create artificial reefs elsewhere in the world, this is the first such attempt in India. 'The idea behind this project is to develop tourism in Sindhudurg. When the ship is submerged, it will gradually form an underwater reef that attracts various kinds of fish. Once that happens, people from all over the world, especially avid scuba divers, will come to the district,' says an official of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporat-ion (MTDC) who is associated with the project. Home to MTDC's Indian Institute of Scuba Diving and Aquatic Sports (IISDA), Sindhudurg, 120 km from Goa, has been a training centre for scuba diving enthusiasts for over a decade. Had all gone according to plan, INS Guldar would have been scuttled in April. Officials said its scuttling was postponed in view of tensions between India and Pakistan after the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam. An official at the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited, the government-run firm responsible for the scuttling, said the process was delayed further due to the early arrival of monsoon in Maharashtra. 'Too much wind or rough seas can topple the ship, which means it won't go down as planned. We are waiting for a lull in the monsoon (to carry out the scuttling),' the official adds. The ageing INS Guldar, a Kumbhir-class landing ship designed for amphibious warfare and capable of beach landings, was once part of India's peacekeeping mission in Sri Lanka, combating attacks from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Tamil separatist group, across the beaches of Jaffna and Trincomalee in the island nation. The plan to acquire a ship for scuttling took off in December 2023, when the MTDC hosted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, then Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde and then Deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis in Sindhudurg on the occasion of Navy Day. Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi, who was then the Flag Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Naval Command, was also in attendance. The MTDC is learnt to have asked Admiral Tripathi for a decommissioned ship as a 'token of gift' to the state tourism department so that it could be turned into an 'underwater museum and artificial reef' at Sindhudurg. The Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation hopes to transform INS Guldar into an underwater tourist attraction. Scuttling is usually a wartime tactic involving the deliberate sinking of a vessel — in case of an emergency or to prevent it from falling into enemy hands. On November 26, 2024, the Union Finance Ministry green-lit the project, followed by a nod from the Maharashtra government on December 19, 2024. On February 21, 2025, the Navy handed over INS Guldar to the MTDC on an 'as is where is' basis at Karwar in Karnataka. Built at Poland's Gdynia Shipyard, INS Guldar was commissioned into the Indian Navy nearly four decades ago, in 1985. It was first based in Visakhapatnam, where it was used for amphibious warfare, transferring troops and equipment and for disaster relief operations. In 1995, it joined the Andaman and Nicobar command, where it served until its decommissioning on January 12, 2024, according to a statement by the Navy. The underwater museum-cum-artificial reef project is estimated to cost Rs 78 crore. The Centre will bear nearly 60% of the total cost and the state government the rest, said an MTDC official. According to the Detailed Project Report (DPR) accessed by The Indian Express, the Sindhudurg site will have a carrying capacity of 2,773 divers daily, spread over six diving sessions in an eight-hour operational period. The MTDC expects at least 71,000 tourists to visit the site in the first year, with the figure projected to go up to 1.10 lakh within a decade. Talking about the underwater museum-cum-artificial reef project, an official said every ship has a scuttling plan that the captain follows to deliberately sink the ship – usually 'in case of an emergency or to prevent it from falling into enemy hands'. The process of scuttling, he said, follows the Archimedes principle, which states that the buoyant force keeping an object afloat is equal to the weight of the water the object displaces. Simply put, for a ship to sink, it must be filled with water to achieve negative buoyancy. 'To achieve that, the ship's sea chest (a compartment built into the hull below the waterline) will be opened to flood the engine room. The front section will also be flooded simultaneously in a controlled manner,' the official says, adding that the process will take up to 10 hours. According to the DPR, the ship, which has been stripped of all pollutants that may harm marine life, will be sunk to a depth of nearly 30 metres. Once submerged, INS Guldar, which has a flat bottom, will simply sit on the seabed, around 3 km from existing scuba diving sites near Malvan and Tarkali beaches or around 15 km off the coast of Sindhudurg, near the Vengurla Rocks in the Arabian Sea. The DPR states that non-certified divers who have completed pool training will be allowed to dive down to a depth of 12 metres; certified divers up to 18 metres, which will give them access to the middle parts of the ship; and advanced divers to the deepest part of the ship, including the hull and the seabed. For non-divers, the MTDC plans to acquire a 24-seater submarine, offering tourists a 20-minute panoramic underwater view of the shipwreck. To enhance employment prospects in Sindhudurg, the MTDC plans to train locals in scuba diving, boat handling and as tourist guides. If successful, this could become India's first operational submarine tourism experience. Gujarat had announced a similar project at the Bet Dwarka island in 2023. While the scuba diving plan is expected to take off as soon as the ship is scuttled, experts say it could take a year or more for a reef to 'fully establish and function as essential habitat'. Alex Fogg, Natural Resources Chief of Florida's Okaloosa County in the United States, says that while fish appear 'almost immediately', the formation of an artificial reef is dependent on a number of factors – from the size of the vessel to the depth at which it is sunk, and its proximity to another reef. 'Larger, more complex vessels in shallower waters tend to establish more quickly,' Fogg explains. 'That's not to say smaller or deeper reefs aren't beneficial, they are just a different community.' Okaloosa County deployed its first artificial reef off Destin-Fort Walton Beach in 1976. Today, it hosts over 500 artificial reefs created from concrete structures, old bridge materials, military equipment, and decommissioned vessels. Marine biologist Vardhan Patankar too says that while the sunken ship could still make for a good scuba diving site since 'it will attract fish and a variety of associated invertebrates', whether it will be a viable reef with diverse composition is debatable. He says, 'An artificial reef is created when free-flowing larvae from a parent reef find another hard substratum (a layer of something, like rock or soil, below another layer). When that happens, they settle and thrive.' Patankar explains, 'Larvae can stay alive for a day and usually settle where their parents are. So, they are not going to come all the way from Angria Bank (a natural reef over 100 km away from Sindhudurg) to this site. They will most likely come from Sindhudurg, where the species composition is low.' Sonal Gupta is a senior sub-editor on the news desk. She writes feature stories and explainers on a wide range of topics from art and culture to international affairs. She also curates the Morning Expresso, a daily briefing of top stories of the day, which won gold in the 'best newsletter' category at the WAN-IFRA South Asian Digital Media Awards 2023. She also edits our newly-launched pop culture section, Fresh Take. ... Read More


NDTV
a day ago
- NDTV
Video: Passenger Occupies Man's Confirmed Seat In Sleeper Coach, Railways Responds
In recent days, several railway passengers have been taking to social media to show the dire condition of trains, which have been marred by overcrowding and ticketless passengers occupying seats. Now, an X user expressed frustration about his experience on the Gwalior-Barauni Express train. The user shared a video showing the overcrowded sleeper coach and complained that his reserved seat was occupied by another passenger. Despite requesting the Ticket Checker, no action was taken to resolve the situation, and his seat remained occupied by another passenger. He wrote, "My seat is occupied by another passenger. I requested the TTE, Sir, to get my seat vacated, but it still hasn't been cleared." Watch the video here: 11123 GWL BJU EXPRESS Sleeper Ka hal Genral Se Bhi Kharab Hai 01. Mera seat dusre passenger ke pas occupied hai maine TTE Sir ko request Kiya ki mera seat khali karva dijiye lekin abhi bhi mera seat khali nahi kiya gya hai. @RailMinIndia @narendramodi @RailwayNorthern — sandipsingh kushwaha (@ksandip_09) August 5, 2025 RailwaySeva, the official customer service handle of Indian Railways, replied to the post and requested the passenger's PNR and mobile number to address the issue. "We regret the experience you had. Please share your PNR number and mobile no. preferably via DM to enable us to take immediate action. You may also raise your concern directly on or dial 139 for speedy redressal," the response read. We regret the experience you had. Please share your PNR number and mobile no. preferably via DM to enable us to take immediate action. You may also raise your concern directly on or dial 139 for speedy redressal. — RailwaySeva (@RailwaySeva) August 5, 2025 The incident highlights a recurring problem in Indian Railways where passengers with unreserved tickets often occupy reserved compartments, particularly sleepers and even AC coaches, due to overcrowding in general compartments. This leads to discomfort and inconvenience for passengers who have paid for reserved seats.


New Indian Express
2 days ago
- New Indian Express
Guard-less goods train derailed in Dhanbad on Jul 31, poses threat to passenger trains: Union
NEW DELHI: The derailment of a fully-loaded goods train on July 31 between Kodarma and Giridih in the Dhanbad rail division has prompted the All India Guards Council to raise safety concerns and renew its demand for urgent filling of vacant train manager posts, warning that such lapses pose a serious threat to passenger trains as well. The council said the derailment occurred due to the absence of a guard (also called a train manager) to assist or guide the crew of the train and protect its rear. The Dhanbad Division of the East Central Railway didn't respond to the council's claims. "When the train was proceeding in an upward direction on a gradient, the locomotive couldn't pull its weight, and it started sliding back. There was no train manager in it. The loco pilot informed the station master, who decided to arrange an additional loco which could assist the train from behind," D Biswas, General Secretary of the All India Guards Council, said. "Since the train was on a curve, the loco pilot couldn't exactly tell the position of the brake van (the last coach meant for guards) and the additional loco coming to assist from behind collided with the brake, resulting in its derailment," Biswas said. The council office bearers said an able train manager could have guided the additional locomotive properly, as such incidents are a safety hazard for rail operations. They referred to the General and Subsidiary Rules of the Railways, which entrust a train manager with the duty to protect the rear of the train. "The train manager has a crucial duty to play. In case any train, be it freight or passenger, stops in between two stations, its the duty of the train manager to not only protect the rear of his/her train but the incoming train as well by ensuring that the tail light is correctly exhibited and switch on flasher light to signal the incoming train of its unusual and unscheduled stoppage," SP Singh, former General Secretary of the AIGC, said. He added, "The Railway norms also say that it is the duty of the guard to place detonators on the track between 600 and 1,200 metres away from his/her train on the same track to alert incoming trains." The council said that due to several posts lying vacant, many divisions have to operate the freight trains with only a loco pilot and the assistant loco pilot, as their priority is passenger trains. Hence, guards are mandatorily provided in passenger trains, causing a shortage for freight trains. "As on December 31, 2024, 27.28 per cent of the positions of train managers were vacant in the Indian Railways," Singh said. "The total sanctioned posts of train managers in the Indian Railway are 53,229. As of December 31, 2024, there were 38,709 train managers working, and 14,520 posts were vacant. It is not a safe practice to operate trains without a manager. We demand immediate filling of all posts in the interest of safe train operations." According to Singh, Railways should realise that a freight train without a guard is a huge risk to passenger trains that share the same track. "In case a freight train stops due to a technical snag or any other reason in between two stations, it is a big safety hazard for the incoming passenger trains as the freight train is a potential threat to the lives of hundreds of passengers, Singh said.