Rajya Sabha deputies have the right to travel for free on the first class / business class railways.
New Delhi:
Rajya Sabha’s deputies will now have to pay the fares for the train journeys they reserved but did not undertake.
In a notice to deputies of the Upper House, the secretary general of Rajya Sabha clarified that he will no longer compensate them for train travel reservations that have not been used.
Rajya Sabha’s secretariat also randomly found that 87% of the total cost of the trips had not been undertaken and that they had not been canceled either. Consequently, the Secretariat must disburse the amount and pay to the Railways.
The secretary general of the RS, Desh Deepak Verma, in a notice to the deputies, asked them to cancel the unused train reservations, failing which recoveries will be made with them.
“Members are requested to cancel all such bookings which are unlikely to be used, well in advance. In the event of non-cancellation of bookings which are not actually used by members, the amount of the rate for these bookings will be recovered from members. “said the councilor.
He noted that, according to the details of the flow requests raised by the Ministry of Railways, several members were making reservations on different trains from the same station / from different destinations to different destinations for the same day.
Rajya Sabha’s secretariat must make payments to the Ministry of Railways even for reservations that are not actually used by members.
Deputies have the right to travel for free on the first class / executive railways and may take an accomplice with the lower classes.
Verma said members should understand that failure to travel on reserved berths and not canceling on time will result in unnecessary expense and avoidable budget drain, even if it annoys the public because it fails not to get confirmed berths / seats.
With the president M Venkaiah Naidu, eager to know the extent of the multiple reservations and their implications, the secretariat of Rajya Sabha carried out an analysis of the number of reservations made and the actual trips made by certain members and former members of the Rajya Sabha, have indicated sources.
A former member of Rajya Sabha would have learned up to 63 reservations up to 4 per day over 23 days in January 2019, for a total of Rs 1.69 lakh, they said.
The former deputy confirmed that he had traveled by train only 7 times against a total train price of only 22,085 rupees, which in fact means that the Rajya Sabha secretariat has to pay an additional amount of rupees. 1,46920, or approximately 87% of the total.
With regard also to a sitting member, the sources indicated, the analysis carried out by the Secretariat revealed that the actual journeys in January 2019 represented only 15 pc of the railways’ total claim, obliging the Secretariat to pay 85 Additional% for journeys not made. .
For the calendar year 2019, the railways have raised a request for 7.8 crores rupees to be made by the secretariat of Rajya Sabha as 1/3 of the total cost of train trips by deputies and former deputies, their spouses and companions. The remaining 2/3 of the total cost must be paid by the Lok Sabha Secretariat.
Sources said the railways have agreed to modify the train booking software by MPs to allow the identification of bookings by members of the two chambers separately. This new software should soon be operational.
