Corruption Watch

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<b>UP minister fined for travelling without ticket</b>

<i>- Sharat Pradhan</i>

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Uttar Pradesh Minorities Welfare Minister<b> Haji Yaqoob Quraishi who shot  into
fame for declaring a whopping bounty of  Rs 51 crores on the head  of the
Danish cartoonist </b>who drew some allegedly blasphemous sketches of Prophet 
Mohammed, is in the news once again.

This time, he was himself at the receiving end -- <b>caught travelling without a
ticket on the New Delhi-Lucknow Mail on Saturday. </b>

Quraishi was travelling with six other persons with him in the First AC cabin
of the prestigious train -- all without tickets. A total fine of Rs  14,056
was realised from him for all seven WT passengers.

According to a railway spokesman, "The minister boarded the train at Hapur 
station on Friday night and forced himself into a First AC coupe; when the 
travelling ticket examiner asked him for the ticket, he claimed that he had  one
but refused to show the same." 

Shortly thereafter, he bolted his compartment and refused to respond to 
repeated requests of the TTE for the ticket.

"Eventually, when the matter was reported over the telephone to higher 
authorities in Lucknow, a special ticket checking squad was detailed to check
the defiant ticketless travellers," the official said. "When the minister  finally
opened the compartment at Lucknow's suburban Alamnagar railway station  on
Saturday morning, we discovered as many as six other ticketless passengers  with
him," he added.

Railway officials and eyewitnesses alleged that the minister was furious at 
the railway staff. <b>"You are a man of the RSS  that is why you are framing  me;
I am a minister and therefore entitled to travel free; I will teach you a 
lesson of your life," he warned </b>the checking staff.

Later when contacted, Lucknow's Additional Divisional Railway Manager 
Rajendra Singh said, "Ministers are entitled to travel against High Official 
Requisition, but it has to be necessarily converted into a ticket for which 
there is no exemption for anyone."

He said, "Even though the minister claimed to  be
carrying the HOR, he had no ticket; and in any case the six persons 
accompanying him had no ticket at all."

It may be recalled that  after declaring the Rs 51 crore bounty on the 
Danish cartoonist's head, Quraishi later decided to make a compromise to save 
the cartoonist his head provided the cartoonist tendered an unconditional 
apology. When the apology was also not forthcoming, he decided to give it up as 
the issue had by then been forgotten.

<b>Of late, he has been spewing venom against his own Chief Minister Mulayam 
Singh Yadav whom he has been accusing of  "neglecting Muslims"</b>
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