At least 7,784 posts of travel ticket examiners (TTEs) are vacant in Indian Railways, the government informed Parliament on Wednesday, a development that could impact the Railways drive to curb ticketless travel and crimp its revenues.
Railways earn a substantial sum through fines from ticket-less passengers, earning over Rs 1,300 crore from such fines from 2016-19.
It is the duty of TTE to check tickets of passengers in the coaches assigned to them. Nearly one crore passengers are caught travelling without a ticket in trains across the country every year.
Zone-wise vacancies in TTE cadre showed the Northern Zone has the highest of 1,106 vacancies, followed by Northern Central with 982. The railways generate the maximum revenue from the Northern zone, earning close to Rs 18,000 crore in traffic receipts from here.
From Central zone, the railways earned a little over Rs 15,000 crore while the southern zone gave a tad more than Rs 8,000 crore in gross traffic receipts.
Indian Railway runs more than 20,000 passenger trains daily, on both long-distance and suburban routes, from 7,349 stations across India.
All reserved coaches of trains are required to be manned by TTEs. But railway officials have often complained about the shortage of TTE in trains. Most of the sleeper coaches and some AC 3 Tier coaches remain unmanned.