Advance train ticket sale begins

People queue up at the ticket counters of Kamalapur Railway Station in Dhaka yesterday to buy tickets home for their Eid holidays. Photo: Anisur Rahman

The sale of advance train tickets ahead of Eid-ul-Azha began yesterday.

This correspondent visited Kamalapur Railway Station in the capital where many alleged that they did not get the tickets for the seats they had desired even after standing in long queues for hours.

“Although I have been standing in the queue since 6:00am for buying a ticket of a Chittagong-bound train, I failed to get the ticket for a seat in the AC compartment,” said Majedul Islam, a student of a private university and resident of Bashundhara area. 

He added that the tickets were sold out within a short time after the counter had started the ticket sale at 9:00am.

The railway authorities said tickets for the AC compartment seats and cabins were limited, leading to the crisis.

The staff of the counters were too slow in distributing the tickets, alleged Isak Rana, a resident of Jatrabari who had been standing in a line till 12:00 noon from 8:00am.

Yesterday, the rush at the station for the advance tickets was comparatively less than the previous years.

Bangladesh Railway started selling advance tickets for October 1 yesterday and will continue the sale for October 2, 3, 4 and 5 from September 27, 28, 29 and 30 respectively.

In the capital, the advance train tickets are available at Kamalapur Railway Station. But many ticket seekers mistakenly spent hours at some other stations, including Airport station.

Rajib Barua, Reaz Uddin and Jahedul Alam, three students of Dhaka University of Engineering and Technology (Duet), said they did not have information about where the advance tickets were available. They spent more than an hour in a long queue at Airport station only to realise they were at the wrong place.

They said the authorities concerned should take more steps to give detailed information about the sale of advance train tickets.

Around 11,000 tickets will be sold from Kamalapur Railway Station and 18,000 to 20,000 from Chittagong and Sylhet railway stations yesterday, said Tofazzol Hossain, director general of Bangladesh Railway, while talking to reporters yesterday morning.

Like the previous years, a person can buy a maximum of four tickets at a time. Passengers can buy the tickets in advance both online and from the ticket counters at the railway stations.

Bangladesh Railway will provide the passengers with a special train service. Some 130 compartments, 30 locomotives will be added to the existing service to cope with the Eid rush, said an official of the railway.

The special trains will run on Dhaka-Dewanganj Bazar, Dhaka-Parbatipur, Dhaka-Khulna, Dhaka-Chittagong and Chittagong-Chandpur routes, said the official, adding that apart from those special trains, two trains will also run on Bhairab-Sholakiya and Mymensingh-Sholakiya routes in the morning on Eid day.

The special service will start from three days before Eid and will continue till seven days after the festival, he mentioned.

The state-run Bangladesh Road Transport Corporation (BRTC) also began advance bus tickets sale yesterday.