The Lost Property Office of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) jotted down the first entry in its logbook on January 17,2004 Rs 1,100 in banknotes found at a platform in the Kashmere Gate Metro station. But six years and 870 other finds later,the money still awaits its owner in a steel almirah of the LPO office in the same station. Sanjeev Kumar Sharma,the manager of the Kashmere Gate Metro Station and the ex-officio in-charge of the LPO,explained how a lost article finds its way to the Kashmere Gate office. For the first 24 hours,the articles are kept at the station from where they are found. After that,they are transferred to the Kashmere Gate Metro station. At every step,details of the item found are meticulously noted down, he said. Sharma estimated that his office receives about 250 inquiries every day,but only about one in three items is successfully recovered. The result: ever-growing sealed sacks and envelopes in the stations storeroom,and crowded almirahs in the LPO and Sharmas office. They contain anything from cash,to jewellery,bags and clothes. Even laptops. Sharma said: I keep the most valuable items in the almirah in my office. There is cash of Rs 1.5 lakh the highest one-time recovery being Rs 34,000 and gold jewellery. The value of the gold at the LPO cannot be estimated since the jewellery is not weighed. Sharma said a procedural flaw forces his staff to continue guarding the forgotten items,some even forgotten by the people who lost them. While perishable items are disposed of accordingly,the LPO has to hold on to the sackfuls of unclaimed items because it has not yet established a code for disposing them. The Indian Railways,on the other hand,has an established procedure on the disposal of lost-and-found items. The railways do not send lost articles of perishable nature to the central lost-and-found office,but are empowered to sell them if not claimed within 24 hours. Other unclaimed articles are auctioned off frequently. Chapter 22 of the Commercial Manual of the Indian Railways says: Such sales will be held of all unclaimed or lost property which has remained in the possession of the railways for three months or such other shorter period as notified by the railway administrationconcerned. It also does not help that the DMRC has not advertised its LPO facility. There are advertisements in the newer lines of the Metro,but the office is yet to receive a dedicated helpline. But the DMRC is making amends. In its revamped website at the planning stage there will a lost and found section now. DMRC Chief Public Relations Officer Anuj Dayal said the Lost Property Office was started in 2004 when the Metro scaled up its operation in 2004. Before that,the Metro had an informal lost-and-found system from the time it began in 2002. This was found inadequate when the network expanded, Dayal said. One can contact the LPO office at (011)23860837
