IWT officials suspended after passenger jumps into the Brahmaputra

Three officials of the Inland Water Transport (IWT) department have been suspended for allegedly failing to maintain records of passengers travelling by a vessel in Assam’s Jorhat district on Thursday.

The incident of the alleged dereliction of duty on part of the officials came to light after a passenger of the vessel purportedly jumped into the Brahmaputra river earlier in the day.

An official statement said here that manual tickets were being issued to a few passengers of RPL Digaru without maintaining records or details due to the downtime of the e-ticketing server on Thursday morning.

“Later on, one such passenger jumped into the Brahmaputra river and has remained untraceable,” it added.

The vessel was going from Nimati Ghat in Jorhat to Kamalabari Ghat in Majuli district.

As per the direction of the state Transport Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary, Ashim Kumar Baruah, Junior Engineer, IWT Jorhat sub-division, and section assistants Alok Gogoi and Bitupon Boruah have been placed under suspension with immediate effect for not maintaining details of passengers, the statement said.

The chairperson of the Assam Inland Water Transport Regulatory Authority, Vivekananda Phookan, has been directed to carry out an inquiry to ascertain facts and circumstances leading to the incident and related issues, and submit the report within 15 days, it added.

Issuance of tickets and maintaining records of each passenger, along with other safety measures, was made mandatory after a ferry had capsized near Nimati Ghat on September 8, leading to the death of three persons.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)