IR's money-raking policy of indiscriminately issuing WL tickets is solely responsible for travel by SL coaches becoming a nightmare these days. As an example for today's 12864 Ypr-Hwh Exp, SL availability showed Regret/WL301 prior to charting. For tomorrow it is WL647/300. Of these even if 100 get confirmed/cancelled, the remaining 200 board the train and crowd the 13 SL coaches @15 extra pax per coach. However actual numbers are higher with at least 25/30 per coach with no confirmed berths as I witnessed in S10 on the train that left Ypr on 23rd January. In the bay in which my wife and I were travelling there were 12 passengers as against the regulation 8. One of them was RAC and the other 3 were travelling with WL tickets.
The...
more... malaise is also slowly spreading to 3A. When I returned from Howrah on 28/1 by 12863 in coach B1 with 64 berths, there were at least 5 passengers travelling with WL tickets in that coach.
The situation in trains from Mumbai bound for Bihar/UP is worse as IR issues WL tickets upto 500 and sometimes even 1000.
What is now more alarming is that such unauthorized passengers also lock the doors of the SL coach from inside making it impossible for passengers with confirmed berths to board the trains from wayside suburban stations like Thane, Krishnarajapuram etc. Indeed it is now a torture to travel by SL class in our trains.