Railway uncertain over refund of cancelled tickets booked through swipe machines

Ferozepur, January 4, 2017: The railway authorities are still uncertain over refund of cancelled tickets booked through swipe machines introduced to control over handling of cash due to demonetization besides putting a check over black money and corruption.
The banks and railways have not so far cleared as to whether the amount will be automatically refunded into the account of the passenger on cancelled of ticket booked by using the ATM cards on the swipe machines or the amount will be paid in cash.
In the past, the railways have installed the swipe machines to book the tickets at all the A grade stations in Ferozepur Railway Division in an agreement with the State Bank of India Chandigarh and all the machines were to be installed by December 31. But these machines were not installed in three states – Punjab, Himachal Pardesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
Non-availability of swipe machines with the bank is said to be the reason behind its non installation. While the shortage of machines is a separate issue but the real problem is uncertainty of procedure to be adopted for refund of the tickets booked through swipe machine in the event of its cancellation. There is no understanding between the bank and railways so far and this is the reason that the swipe machines have not so far been installed at all A Grade stations.
Divisional Commercial Superintendent, Ferozepur Rail Division, Shrivastva expressed the hope to install the machines at the ticket counters shortly besides providing this facility at JTBS, Suwidha Kendras along with the cash counters for which the instructions have been issued. In the first phase, the four at Ludhiana, one at Jalandhar City, under JTBS seven 7 in Ludhiana, 5 in City, one each at Amritsar, Pathankot Cantt and one at Kot Kapura.