CHENNAI: Last month, a NEET aspirant from Mallapuram in Kerala booked train tickets to come to Chennai for the exam. Her plan: The train would reach Chennai by 4:30am and she would have around four hours to freshen up and reach the exam centre. But the railways, unknowingly, had willed otherwise. The train was delayed by around five hours and the girl could not report to the venue on time. The delay cost her a year’s effort.This was not a stray incident. Data tabled in Parliament shows that punctuality of trains terminating in Chennai and other stations in Tamil Nadu and Kerala has deteriorated over the past three years. The punctuality rate dropped from 88.3% in 2015-16 to 80% in 2017-18. Punctuality of every class of train — from premium trains like Rajdhani and Shatabdi to super-fast and express trains — has got hit. (The punctuality figures indicate the percentage of trains which were on time.)Passengers pay a surcharge for tickets on superfast, Rajdhani and Shatabdi express trains. But only 76% of super-fast trains were on time in 2017-18, while corresponding figures for Shatabdi and Rajdhani were 89.4% and 72.76%.A cursory glance at complaints made to the railways on social media shows that most grievances are about train delays. A significant drop in punctuality of trains in Kerala has resulted in office-goers shifting to other modes of transport as their salaries have been cut for reporting late to work. This has resulted in a drop in the passenger count, show statistics. However, a section of railway officials say a majority of passengers are not bothered about a delay unless it is too much.An internal survey conducted by Chennai division shows that in more than 50% of cases, engineering defects on the tracks or track maintenance works are responsible for trains running late. Other reasons include delays due to signal failures, failure of locomotives, accidents at level crossing or runover deaths and passenger agitations. And despite several apps to inform passengers about train delays on real-time, sometimes information turns out to be incorrect.“On a recent Sunday, trains were delayed by at least three hours due to the derailment of a goods train near Katpadi. However, the railways’ National Train Enquiry System application showed that trains were on time,” said K Baskar, member of Chennai Divisional Railway Users Consultative Committee.Sources said the punctuality figures might not be final. Even railway circulars have acknowledged that data is fudged. Replies to an RTI application filed by an association in Kolathur documents this fudging. It mentions that the actual delay of Trivandrum Mail on January 4 at Jolarpettai was 51 minutes although it was marked as 37 minutes in the railway records.A request to get a reaction from Southern Railway’s chief operations manager S Anantharaman was declined by the official spokesman of the zone.

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