20th Rly claims tribunal bench inaugurated

New Delhi: Justice Govind Mathur, chief justice of the Allahabad high court, on Sunday inaugurated the 20th bench of railway claims tribunal in the old general manager office of North Central Railway (NCR) at Prayagraj.

Others present on the occasion were justice KS Ahluwalia, chairman, railway claims tribunal (RCT), Rajiv Chaudhry, general manager, NCR, Sanjiv Aggarwal, member (judicial), railway claims tribunal, Allahabad bench and Madhusudan Rao, principal executive director, Commercial Railway Board. Installation of member judicial of the tribunal was done by justice Mathur.

The tribunal has been set up in Prayagraj keeping in mind that it is not only religiously, politically and educationally important city of Uttar Pradesh but is also a major city of the country as it has the Central Administrative Tribunal, high court, headquarters of NCR and divisional railway manager's office Allahabad.

Despite having three large divisions and being an important railway zone, there was no railway claims tribunal in the jurisdiction of NCR. Officers and employees often had to go to Lucknow, Gorakhpur or Ghaziabad for their claims settlement. Realizing this need, NCR GM Rajiv Chaudhry had been raising this issue at Ministry level ...owing to this that the tribunal for Prayagraj was sanctioned, said NCR's chief public relations officer Ajit Kumar Singh. In this tribunal, 17 districts including Banda, Bhadohi (Sant Ravidas Nagar), Chandauli, Chitrakoot, Fatehpur, Jalaun, Jaunpur, Jhansi, Kannauj, Kaushambi, Lalitpur, Mahoba, Mirzapur, Pratapgarh, Prayagraj, Sonbhadra and Varanasi are covered.