Anantnag: Since the abrogation of Article 370 on August 5 last year, train services in Kashmir have remained suspended for more than eight months. The railways has lost crores of rupees in revenue while having to pay salaries of staff that does no work.
Trains in Kashmir run on the 135-kilometer Banihal-Baramulla track. They were suspended when the entire Kashmir valley was put under lockdown ahead of August 5.
As per Railways officials, it took more than three months to resume services on the track on November 12, 2019.
“For the next 4 months or so, the services ran smoothly, more or less,” a Railways official told Kashmir Reader.
He said that the trains were again put to a halt due to the coronavirus lockdown on March 20 this year. Trains have stayed grounded since then.
“So, you can safely say that in the last one year our operations have remained suspended for over 8 months,” the official said, requesting not to be named. He added, “The losses are being incurred by both the Railways and the state exchequer.”
The Railways in Kashmir sees an uptick in revenue between May and October. Most of this purple patch was lost last year as well as this year.
“In the rest of the months our revenue remains at an average of 3 lakh rupees per day,” the official said, adding that the amount sums up to at least 7.2 crore rupees during the eight months in which the operations remained suspended.
Railways in Kashmir has a staff of about 2,800 people (including 1,500 security personnel) whose salaries also run in crores and have to be paid at the end of the month.
“We have 25 officers here who get a salary of around 1.5 lakh rupees per month. We have more than 1,500 Class-3 employees with an average salary of about 80k per month and other 600 Group-D employees with a salary of around 30k per month,” the official said.
Roughly calculated, the amount runs into Rs 14 crore per month.
“This is the amount of salary that the Railways is paying,” the official said.
Apart from these employees, some 1,000 youths from families who lost land to Railways construction here in Kashmir, were given jobs with the department and are paid around Rs 30k per month on average.
The amount adds up to another 3 crore rupees per month. This is paid by the state exchequer.
Apart from these losses, the stagnation of train coaches and the wear and tear of the railway tracks as they remain unused also builds up costs.
“It might sound just ‘wear and tear’ but when the operations start again and things will need to be mended, it will be a substantial amount which will be spent on the maintenance of the railway coaches and/or the tracks,” the official said.
There is no communication yet from the authorities on resuming train services in Kashmir, the official said.

Suhail A Shah