No regular trains till Jun 30, tickets cancelled by Rlys
Special & Shramik trains to continue
The Indian Railways has decided not to resume regular passenger services, at least till June 30. The special trains and Shramik specials, however, will continue.
The national transporter said in a notification that all the regular passenger operations, including mail, express, passenger, and suburban services would remain cancelled until further guidelines from the authorities. The notification added that all the tickets booked on these trains, till June 30, will remain cancelled and passengers would be given full refund. This comes almost 53 days after the government stopped passenger services on March 22. These tickets were booked before the lockdown was announced in March.
The gradual resumption of passenger services has resumed through 15 pairs of special trains that started operating on May 12. From May 13, IRCTC started taking the destination address of all passengers booking tickets on special trains, to ensure contact tracing, if required later.
Before special trains, Shramik special trains started running for transportation of migrants, tourists, and students stuck in various cities on May 1. Till Thursday, 800 Shramik Special trains have been operationalised from various states, transporting over 1 million passengers.
Around 1,200 passengers travel each on Shramik Special trains while observing social distancing. A similar number of passengers are transported in special trains.
After the restart of bookings for fully-air conditioned special trains on May 11, over 125,000 tickets worth ~45.30 crore for 234,000 passengers have been booked for travel in the next seven days, it said.
In a separate notification, the Railways indicated that waitlisted tickets will be available for bookings opening on May 15 for journeys from May 22 for special trains.