Passengers of Telangana Express misled by SMS, train tracker app, cause confusion

HYDERABAD: Passengers scheduled to leave Nampally railway station by the Telangana Express (12723) on Monday, August 28, 2023, were put through a lot of inconvenience, not only by the inordinate delay in departure but also by the wrong live tracking updates that forced some of them to cancel their travel plans.

The passengers bound for New Delhi, woke up to a message from the Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) that the train scheduled for 6 am from Nampally station, Hyderabad Deccan would be delayed by 2.30 hours, to leave at 8.30 am.

Even though the passengers were concerned about the more than two-hour delay in their journey and how it would have had a cascading effect by the time they reached their destinations, started arriving at the station based on the CRIS message that they received.

A few inquisitive passengers at Secunderabad Station in an effort to track the movement of the train coming from Hyderabad checked the “Where is my train” app on their mobile phones, only to find that the train had left Hyderabad on time, crossed Secunderabad, and reached Kazipet junction at 8.05 am, the regular time. Panicked passengers who arrived at the Secunderabad station two hours late as per the CRIS message ran from pillar to post to ascertain whether the train, in fact, left Hyderabad or it was in Hyderabad to start at the rescheduled time. It was reported that a few passengers even canceled their tickets and rushed to the airport to try their luck on any available flight to New Delhi.

However, the Telangana express was very much available at the Nampally station and started as per the rescheduled time of 8.35 am to reach Secunderabad at 09.09 am and Kazipet at 11 am.

How does it happen

A click on your mobile phone when you try to track your train would land you on a page that would give you a plethora of apps to choose from. The problem was the passenger would never know which one of these apps was authentic or certified by the Indian Railways. In this case, passengers were grossly misguided by the ‘Where is my train’ app which was developed by Sigmoid Labs for the Indian Railways in 2015.

The live tracking information must be linked to the Indian Railway tracking service for authentic and dependable information as live tracking was also backed by information provided to passengers traveling in the very train that one would track.

Somehow, on Monday, the changed time was not reflected in the particular tracking app leading to confusion. However, as the day progressed the tracking time was cooly corrected without any notification about the flaw and it started reflecting the progress of the train in real time.

Efforts to contact IRCTC and South Central Railway authorities on the confusion are yet to bear fruit.