Mumbai: Queues back at ticket counters, thanks to security flaw in COTVMs

The long queues are back at railway ticket counters. Just when the new cash-and-coin operated ticket vending machines (COTVM) were becoming popular among commuters, the railways have now shut them down, after cops busted a racket in Pune that stole crores from the machines.

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The cash-and-coin machines at CST stand defunct as commuters queue up at the ticket counters. Pic/Suresh Karkera

Central and Western Railway shut down 80 of the cash-coin machines across the suburban railway system. As a result, thousands of commuters are once again forced to wait in queue at the ticket counters. The decision to shut down the COTVMs was taken a fortnight ago, after the Railway Protection Force (RPF) found crooks breaking into the machines by exploiting the software, resulting in crores of rupees being stolen. Presently, the software arm of Indian Railways - the Delhi-based Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) - is working on finding a solution to this flaw.

The machines had been installed just last October, at the cost of Rs 7.5 lakh each. At the time, the railways had boasted that the COTVMs were invulnerable to fraud as they could detect fake currency notes.

"It is surprising that the railways cannot look into these loopholes before introducing new facilities. There are railway stations where the ATVMs have taken over the burden, but these COTVMs surely were a respite," said Madhu Kotian, president of the Mumbai Rail Pravasi Sangh.

Success story
The blue-and-silver COTVMs were installed at major railway stations in the suburban system and were quickly gaining popularity. At CR stations, a good 1% of the total ticketing per day was through the cash-and-coin machines.

Thanks to this, the burden on the ticket counters had come down to 50%, as mid-day had reported just last month (‘In a first, window sales on CR dip under 50%', July 27). The remaining burden is covered by the ATVMs and through shops that have permits to sell tickets for the additional charge of Re 1 plus the ticket fare. In fact, the long-term plan was to replace the ATVMs with the cash-and-coin machines, since these accept coins, cash and smart cards.

At the moment, there are over 700 ATVMs across the suburban network, and these are being relied upon to take some of the burden from the ticket counters.

However, since these only accept smart cards and not all commuters have them, the railways have posted employees to assist commuters in buying tickets.