Indian Railways has announced that all the train tickets booked till June 30 on the regular trains, including Mail, Express, Passenger, and Suburban, have been cancelled.
The Railways will be refunding the amount to all passengers who had booked the tickets during the lockdown period when the railways was allowing bookings for journeys in June, said a notification issued by Director, Passenger Marketing, Railway Board. The Railways has now cancelled all the tickets booked during and before the lockdown announcement, for travel on or before June 30 in these train services.
Shramik and special train services to continue
However, according to the notification, Shramik trains that ferry home lakhs of stranded migrant workers amid the lockdown will continue its services. The special trains that are running on 15 routes to ferry stranded Indians across the country will also continue its services.
The special train services were announced by the Railways on May 12 amid the ongoing lockdown as a step to gradually resume the train services, which had come to a halt since the commencement of the nationwide lockdown on March 25.
The Railway Board on May 13, Wednesday had issued an order introducing the provision of waiting list tickets not only for the special trains but for more such trains "to be notified in due course".
Waiting list tickets
In its new release on Wednesday, the Railway Board has also issued an order introducing the provision of the waiting list starting from May 22 for journeys on its presently operational special trains as well as for all its forthcoming services.
However, the railways has capped the waiting list on these trains up to 100 for AC 3 Tier, 50 for AC 2 Tier, 200 for Sleeper Class, 100 for Chair Cars and 20 each for First AC and Executive Class.
As the ticket bookings were let open by the IRCTC, the Indian Railways had booked tickets for 80,000 passengers, earning a staggering amount of Rs 16 crore right on its first day.
The order also stated chances of all train services other than the now running AC trains, thus indicating on its services to smaller stations too.
Although, Reservation against Cancellation (RAC) tickets, Tatkal or Premium Tatkal Quota nor senior citizen quota will not be made available on these trains.
