Passenger fought against Railways for Rs 35 for 5 years, benefitting 2.98 lac passengers

Charges ranging from payment gateway to service charges are deducted when booking a train ticket. Engineer Sujit Swamy, who lives in Kota, had also booked a train ticket five years ago. But then he canceled the ticket. Railways had deducted Rs 35 as service charge while booking tickets. However, after canceling the ticket, Swami did not get a refund. Swami insisted on getting a refund.

He has now succeeded after five years of hard work. Importantly, Swami's five-year struggle against the railways has benefited about 3 lakh people. Swamy sought the help of RTI to get a refund. He said that he had to write several letters to the government department to get back Rs 35 of the service charge. He filed about 50 RTI applications. Finally, the Railways agreed to refund the Rs 2.42 crore recovered as service charge. These crores of rupees were recovered through 2.98 lakh RTI users. In this, many users had booked tickets more than once and canceled.

Swamy had booked a ticket for the Golden Temple Mail from Kota to Delhi in April 2017. It was for the July 2 trip. Exactly one day before that, i.e. from 1st July, GST was introduced. He had booked a ticket for Rs 765. When he canceled the ticket, he got a refund of Rs 665 by deducting Rs 100 instead of Rs 65. However, before the introduction of GST, even if the ticket was canceled, Rs 35 was deducted as service charge. After a long battle through RTI, Swamy received a refund of Rs 33 on May 1, 2019. At that time Rs 2 was deducted in the name of rounded value of service tax. After that Swami started fighting again for 2 rupees. They finally had success last week. A senior IRCTC official informed them that a total of Rs 35 would be refunded to 2.98 lakh users. He also got back Rs 2 after sending the bank details.