Uttarbanga Exp: উত্তরের আত্মার আত্মীয় - Avinaba Bose

It seems like that Railway was waiting for such an order from Karnataka High Court. Soon after the verdict on Oct-8-2012, Railway extended the train to Karwar on Nov-1-2012, as the High Court had directed to do the same on or before Nov-15-2012. Moreover, High Court had directed to split the train into half(12 coaches to Kannur and 12 to Karwar) by adding 8 more coaches to 16 coaches running at that time running only to Kannur. But, after bifurcation, Railway put just 5 coaches to Kannur(later increased to 8) and 15 coaches to Karwar and the passengers from Kannur had to wait for 2 hours at Mangalore Central for the Karwar train to arrive and proceed to Yesvantpur after amalgamation. Regarding the number of coaches, Railways didn't follow High Court directives. Railway had provided a completely wrong information that just less than 100 passengers...
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used to travel to Kannur in this train after Mangalore. Even reserved passengers were much more than this figure between Mangalore&Kannur. Is Railway ready to provide the number of passengers now between Mangalore & Karwar in this train? During peak season(April-July) and during Onam, Vishu, Chirstmas, Eid, entrance exams, etc, the trains are full with waiting list starting from almost 2 month ahead for a period of atleast 1 week. As the combined population of Kannur&Kasargod districts(3830378) is around 50% more than the combined population of Udupi&Uttara Kannada districts(2614530) and the train runs just 115km(out of 132km) through these districts (Kannur&Kasaragod) and 216km(out of 258km) through Udupi & Uttara Kannada districts. If we include both Suratkal & Mulki also, the population is much higher. People from other neighboring districts such as Chikmagalur, Dharwad, Belgaum, Shimoga, Haveri, South Goa, etc use this train very rarely. As the people from Kodagu district will be using this train on Mangalore-Yesvantpur route and from Wayanad, Mahe & Kozhikode districts also, the use of this train is very rare. Before introduction of Bangalore trains(around 10 years back) from Mangaore or Kannur, around 100 buses used to ply between Kannur&Kasargod districts to Bangalore, which is much higher than the number of Bangalore buses from both Uttara Kannada & Udupi districts. There were much more buses to Bangalore than the buses to state capital Trivandrum from both these districts, as many used to travel to Bangalore and Mysore for business, education, tour, trade, jobs, etc. It is clear that more people travel to Bangalore from these north Kerala districts than Udupi & Uttara Kannada districts. Still Railway is playing something dumb & deaf game. It was a very good and justifiable decision to extend this train upto Karwar, as it deserves to have connection with its state capital. But, both the sides are to be checked for extending the train. Always, there is a step-mother treatment to Kerala by Railway. They didn't consider Kannur-Yesvantpur express as mother train. The child train had 3 times the number of coaches than the mother train. When Palakkad division was bifurcated and Salem division was formed, Salem division had more route kilometers than the mother division. The reason they said was the regions in Tamilnadu should be part of the division in TN, not in Kerala. Moreover, the people are shrinking to its own state, rather than the India as a whole. Even no state will give this much water to Tamil Nadu that also almost free of cost. Still they say their own Tamilnadu. Kerala is the Most Generous State in India in giving and the Poorest State in India in Taking. It is 100% Reality.