Train ticket rush gets madder

Although the day's advance tickets marking Eid-ul-Azha had been sold out within the morning hours, some 20 to 30 people were still sitting on the floor marking their position in queues with newspapers and clothes before the counters at Kamalapur Railway Station yesterday around 2:00pm.

These people informed that they were determined to get train tickets and be home for the festival, so much that they were planning on waiting 19 hours, till 9:00am today when the advance sales begin. Most were seen dozing, reading newspapers and gossiping to pass the time.

The scenario was a bit different in Chittagong Railway Station, with the rush targeting yesterday, the third day of the advance ticket sale.

Some 14,000 tickets are available daily in Dhaka but railway officials believe the demand is at least for 50,000. In Chittagong, officials say they sell at least 15,000 tickets in the two or three days prior to Eid.

People now prefer trains as they had to suffer long hours on the road due to traffic congestion, they add.

Tickets for September 20, 21 and 22 were sold on Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday respectively. Similarly, tickets for September 23 and 24 will be available today and tomorrow. A person can buy a maximum of four tickets.

Monowar Hossain came to Kamalapur on Wednesday morning for tickets to Khulna. "I waited around five hours but tickets were sold out before my turn came. That is why, I have come today," he told The Daily Star.

Others had to sacrifice important tasks in their schedule "Today I had an academic course examination in my university. But I have come here to collect tickets of Dinajpur," said Yasin Ali.

Some people in the queues were found listing names of those before and after them. "In previous years we saw that some people came hours later and forcibly tried to jump the queue. It creates a chaotic situation," said Azizul Islam.     

Like previous days, most tickets were sold out within a few hours. Many blamed this on the black marketing of tickets.

Meanwhile, a mobile court assisted by Rab jailed seven persons for seven days to three months for the offence and fined two persons Tk 1,000 each for attempting to create chaos in queues. Earlier in the morning, a Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) team seized 27 tickets and Tk 2.3 lakh from five of them, said Sarwar Alam, an executive magistrate at the Rab headquarters.

The railway authorities will operate seven pairs of special trains from September 22 to October 3 to cope with the rush of passengers. Around 10 lakh people use trains to leave the city ahead of Eid each year, say railway officials.

In Chittagong, around 2,000 of the 4,280 tickets available were left unsold on the first two days of the advance sale.

Yesterday, some 1,000 of 7,512 were left unsold. However, those left were mostly of special trains to Chandpur while intercity train tickets, of Bijoy Express, Paharika Express, Udayan Express and Turna Express, were sold out by 12:45pm, according to the station sources.

The rush for yesterday's tickets began on Wednesday night when witnesses said some 300 people were found waiting in queues around 11:00pm.