4L tickets booked in first 2.5 hrs for June 1 trains

NEW DELHI/CHENNAI: Almost 4 lakh tickets were booked within 2.5 hours of opening the bookings for the 100 pairs of passenger trains that the Railways will operationalise on June 1, officials said Thursday.

On Wednesday, the Railways had issued a list of 100 pairs of trains that it will operate from June 1. The list included Durontos, Sampark Krantis, Jan Shatabdis and Poorva Express. “At 12:00 Hours, 73 trains were available in the system for booking and 1,49,025 tickets were booked having 2,90,510 passengers,” said a railway spokesperson. These trains will have both AC and non-AC classes and fully reserved coaches.

The Railways said these trains will be “special trains run on the pattern of regular trains”, covering tier 2 cities and also major state capitals like Mumbai and Kolkata. People have also started reverse bookings to come back to work.

Ticket counters to open at select stations from today In a significant move, the Railways on Thursday allowed select reservation counters to open at stations from Friday, nearly two months after they were shut due to the coronavirus lockdown, with Railway Minister Piyush Goyal saying “we have to take India towards normalcy”. He also said that an announcement on resumption of more trains will be made soon.

In an order, the railway board said that such counters along with the common service centres can open from May 22 for booking reserved tickets and the zonal railways can identify stations on which the ticket counters can open. Goyal also said that booking of train tickets will resume at nearly 1.7 lakh common service centres across the country from Friday, making the service accessible to those in remote locations where the availability of computers and internet is negligible or absent. He said that the opening of ticket counters at stations will be graded as a protocol needed to be developed to ensure that there is no crowding there.