Indian Railways mandate entities to specify export commodity in Bangladesh- bound rail freight

In what is seen as a move to intensify a crackdown on ‘indent mafia’ that corners the availability of wagons in advance and profiteers from the scarcity, the Indian Railways has tightened its control over Bangladesh-bound rail freight and has made it compulsory for any entity that books a wagon headed for Bangladesh from India to specify the commodity being transported.

This is as per media reports, which added the railways had made a submission of a letter of credit (LC) at the time of booking an indent mandatory earlier this year even if the details of the LC are fed on the Freight Operations Information System of the railways, which reportedly includes all relevant information including date of issue and expiry of LC, LC number, name of bank and beneficiary, tonnage moved by any other mode of transport on the same LC, etc.

It may be mentioned here that an indent is a booking demand raised by a customer seeking to use railway wagons for transporting commodities even as an indent, under the revised guidelines now, can be placed after feeding in the commodity that will be transported along with the route.