‘PAY ₹30,000 TO MAN FOR MISSING FLIGHT DUE TO TRAIN DELAY’

‘PAY ₹30,000 TO MAN FOR MISSING FLIGHT DUE TO TRAIN DELAY’

Railways can’t be slowcoach: SC

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:08.09.2021

In a first of its kind ruling that will jolt the Railways and pleasantly surprise the general public that takes train delays as part of life, the Supreme Court ordered the Railways to pay a compensation of Rs 30,000 to a man who missed a flight from Jammu to Srinagar as the Ajmer-Jammu Express reached its destination four hours late.

A bench of Justices M R Shah and Aniruddha Bose fastened accountability on the Railways for delayed running of trains. It said that if the Railways cannot explain why a train reached its destination late causing inconvenience to passengers, then it would be liable to compensate them in case they filed a deficiency of service complaint before a consumer forum.

The SC said passengers’ time is precious and someone must be held accountable for train delays. “These are the days of competition and accountability. If the public transportation has to survive and compete with private players, they have to improve the system and their working culture. Citizen/passenger cannot be at the the mercy of the authorities/administration. Somebody has to accept the responsibility,” it said.

Justices Shah and Bose upheld the concurrent orders of the district, state and national consumer forums granting Rs 30,000 compensation with 9% interest to Sanjay Shukla, who with his family missed the 12 noon flight from Jammu to Srinagar because the train scheduled to reach Jammu at 8.10am on June 11, 2016 had chugged into the final stop almost four hours late at 12 noon, leaving the family with no chance of making it on time to the Jammu airport which was at quite a distance from the station.

The family had to arrange for a taxi to travel from Jammu to Srinagar at a cost of R 15,000 and pay Rs 10, 000 for lodging at Srinagar. The district consumer forum, Alwar, had surprised the Northern Western Railways by ordering it to reimburse to Shukla the costs incurred towards taxi fare and lodging and also pay an additional Rs 5,000 for mental agony and litigation expenses. The forum’s decision was upheld by State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission and the National Commission. The Railways then appealed against the NCDRC decision in the SC.

Additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati argued that in view of Rule 114 and Rule 115 of the Indian Railway Conference Association Coaching Tariff No. 26 Part-I (Volume-I), there shall not be any liability of the railways to pay compensation for train delays. But, the bench was in no mood to accept the argument given the chronicity of delay in running of trains in India.

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