Unholy nexus between officials and tour operators at Sarai Rohilla(DEE):
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I'm relating this bad experience of mine , during my recent Jammu trip from Delhi.
I had booked WL220/WL60 status E-ticket (single) in SL of Jammu Duronto from Sarai Rohilla ,some 25 days prior to the date of journey. I was confident that I would easily get confirmed seat as on...
more... here on IRI , people have stated that it usually runs with 2-3 extra SL extra coaches.
I was too damn sure.
One day prior to the date, i checked my pnr status and it was down to RAC 22 from original WL220/WL60 status.... i then did'nt bother to check any further ...with 3 extra coaches... a RAC 22 would surely be confirmed.
Imagine my disgust on reaching Sarai Rohilla next day, only to find that my ticket was still RAC22!! INSPITE OF 3 EXTRA SL COACHES added that day!!
The weirdest thing was the distribution of CNF quota ... from RAC1 till some RAC 70? (approx) ...only 25- 30 unfortunate ones (IN RANDOM ORDER?) were still in in RAC!! rest all CNFmed..... it was so weird... people with RAC lower than mine were cleared in RAC 30's 40's 50's 60's got confirmed seats.
The WL confirmations were downright nonsensical
regular WL1 to WL280?(approx)...and WL1 till WL100 ALMOST ALL confirmed!!
When I got to my seat in S6 , I found only 2 other side lower seats were for unfortunate RAC ticket holders like me(similar situation in other sleeper coaches).... so apparently there was not much rush ?!! only 6 people per SL coaches had to suffer rest all had been accommodated?!!!
Interestingly, my coach was more than 50% occupied by tourists from Rajasthan traveling in single large group distributed all over the SL coaches, seats arranged courtesy of their traveling agency. This travel agent was going from seat to seat to these tourists " Ab khush ji, dekha aapko seat dila di na! , abb araam se sojaeye, subah jaldi utth jayega , this train always RT. Jai mata di!!"
Later , I found out that that night 2-3 more of such tourists groups by different traveling agencies were traveling with us....
I did question TT about this weird allotment method.... dead pan jawab "Headquater quota"... WTF