BENGALURU: After a fortnight-long campaign creating awareness among commuters on maintaining physical distance and wearing face mask properly in Metro trains and stations, the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL) has began booking violators.
In the last five days, 231 commuters have been booked and Rs 57,750 collected as fines. Executive Director (Operations and Maintenance), BMRCL, A S Shankar told The New Indian Express that squads, comprising operations and maintenance staff as well as security personnel, were entrusted the job of booking violators.
The move to book violators was started on March 24. “However, initially we mostly warned commuters and booked very few cases. We had only booked nine cases up to April 4. It is only from April 5 that we decided to go in for stringent action and put in motion squads and conducted enforcement drives.
Commuters are penalised Rs 250 for every violation.” The highest collection was recorded on Friday (April 9) when 88 cases were booked and Rs 22,000 collected as fine (see box). No one without a mask is permitted entry inside any Metro station since the restart of operations. Asked if there was resistance to paying up, Shankar said, “People are not creating any problems.
They are aware that they cannot argue as we are carrying out surveillance inside trains.” Advocate Kantaraj Tavane, who was a witness to a few commuters being booked inside the train he was travelling tweeted, “The photo of every person is clicked before asking for the fine. A person inside my train who refused to pay up was asked to get down and was taken away.”