Janhit Sewa solves passengers’ woes

The counter owner,Mohit Gupta,hopes to take the ticket sales up to 1.2 lakh in the coming months.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation revealed that in 24 hours,the counter deals with anywhere between 3,000 and 4,000 tickets. In terms of time taken,it will be around 25 seconds per ticket. “Considering the long queues people were forced to stand in to get an unreserved ticket,this is such a big relief,” said an official of the NCR.

Chief Public Relations Officer,NCR,Sandeep Mathur,said that such counters are working both ways — making it easy for the people to get tickets and generating employment at the same time.

Talking to The Indian Express from Kanpur,Gupta said that the venture has been very popular. “We have worked hard. I was a milkman,so I knew the people in the area,which meant that I did not have to work too hard for making people in the area aware about the service,” he said.

Getting ready to open another counter at the same centre,Gupta,however,wants the Railways to allow 24-hour facility for depositing cash. “Not having running cash all the time poses problems while dealing with passengers,” said Gupta.

He also added that the new outlets should be put through same quality control parameters as was applied to his counters so that the passengers are happy with the service. The NCR officials maintained that these issues would be sorted out.

Even at other counters,those running them are earning anywhere between Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000 per month,said officials. They added that these ticket sales have not led to any sort of decrease in sales at the stations. “It appears that we were simply not able to provide tickets in time to such a large number of people on a daily basis,” the NCR official said.

Under the scheme,the NCR has already identified 121 JTBS counters in the NCR zone — Allahabad,Kanpur,Hathras,Aligarh,Etawah,Khurja,Jhansi,Gwalior and other cities. Out of these,26 JTBS counters have begun functioning,while allotments have been made to total 38 counters.

In Allahabad division of the NCR zone,there would be 17 such counters,while in Jhansi and Agra divisions,the numbers would be six and three,respectively.