Sir — Union Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu has rightly mooted the idea to replace non air-conditioned sleeper coaches with chair cars in short-distance rail routes for increasing passenger-capacity and rail-revenue. But the Railways Ministry should also look into the aspect of an RTI response from the Rajya Sabha Secretariat, confirming that no cancellation charges are levied on cancelled reservation done by parliamentarians, because they are privileged with facility of free rail travel. It is a bitter fact that all seats/berths in first-class air-conditioned coaches are full much in advance, mostly in the name of various parliamentarians.
A system should be formulated whereby full cancellation charges must be recovered from parliamentarians who do not avail of their reserved berths, like it is done from members of the public.