After spending a melancholy period of 1 month and 18 days, the stranded migrants and the workers those from the another state, finally breathed a sigh of relief as the Indian Railways on Sunday announced that it plans to gradually restart passenger train operations from 12th May (Tuesday), 2020.
The initial stage of the passenger train restart operations will begin with 15 pairs of special trains (30 return journeys), a railway ministry notification clarified.
“Railways plans to gradually restart passenger train operations from 12th May, 2020, initially with 15 pairs of special trains connecting New Delhi with major stations across India. Booking in these trains will start at 4 pm on 11th May,” Union Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry Piyush Goyal said in a tweet.
Railways plans to gradually restart passenger train operations from 12th May, 2020, initially with 15 pairs of special trains connecting New Delhi with major stations across India. Booking in these trains will start at 4 pm on 11th May.https://t.co/DW9I1sPRx6
— Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) May 10, 2020
The freshly announced railways ministry order has informed that these trains will run as special trains from New Delhi station to 15 major cities of the country, namely Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Bilaspur, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi. But keep in mind, few of these trains may not be functional on daily basis.
“Thereafter, Indian Railways shall start more special services on new routes, based on the available coaches after reserving 20,000 coaches for Covid-19 care centres and an adequate number of coaches being reserved to enable operation of up to 300 trains every day as ‘Shramik Special’ for stranded migrants,” said the railways ministry.
Booking of tickets through travel partners or agents shall not be acceptable. “Ticket booking counters at the railway stations shall remain closed and no counter tickets (including platform tickets) shall be issued,” the railways ministry order further read. Only passengers with valid confirmed tickets will be allowed to enter the railway premises and board on the train.
Initially, all these passenger trains will be run only with air-conditioned (AC) coaches and with limited stoppages. The ticket fare will be equivalent to the fare that the IRCTC generally charged for any premium or Rajdhani-class train.
Before boarding on these trains, it is mandatory for all the passengers to wear face cover or use mask. Passengers will be screened at the station and those not showing coronavirus positive symptoms will be allowed to travel.
If you don’t remember, the railway ministry had stopped its passenger train operations almost one and half months ago as part of a strategy to prevent or confront the rapid spread of the deadly coronavirus disease (COVID-19) across the country.
