JAIPUR: Jalsu Nanak Halt railway station, about 80 km from the Nagaur district headquarters in Rajasthan, is a special railway station of the country. It’s not run by the railways but by the villagers of the area.
The villagers sell tickets, run the station and are also involved in its maintenance. But after having done this for 17 years, they now want to hand back the station’s management to the railways and have submitted a memorandum to the Jodhpur DRM to this effect.
The reasons for wanting to surrender the station are two: firstly, the sole person the villagers appointed to run the station is finding it difficult to manage the show and secondly, it is becoming economically unviable.
Ishwar Singh, who has been running the station for the last five years, said commission from ticket sale was very low, forcing him to shell out money from his own pocket. “Every month 25-30,000 tickets are sold and the commission is Rs 3,000 or at best Rs 5,000. This is very little and I have to spend my own money to get tickets every 4-5 days,” he said.
“The person who sits at the ticket counter does not get more than Rs 5,000 as commission. Besides due to lack of permanent staff the safety of the station is also an issue and passengers cannot travel at night,” village sarpanch Kailash explained.
The Jalsu Nanak Halt railway station was started in 1976 to facilitate the movement of soldiers and their families. Three villages near the railway station, Jalsu Kala, Jalsu Khurd and Jalsu Nanak, have
many members in the security forces.
Currently more than 200 villagers are in the Army, BSF, Navy, Air Force and the CRPF. There are also more than 250 retired soldiers. But as revenue from the station declined, it was decided to close the station in 2005.
This prompted the villagers to protest. “The railways put a strange condition. They said the villagers could run the railway station but will have to sell at least 1,500 tickets a month .This was accepted and since then it is being run by us,” said villager Jai Singh Jodha.
“The villagers ran this station for so many years so that soldiers engaged in the country’s security do not have trouble. The government should do this much for them,” the sarpanch said.