The Indian Railways had on Sunday said that it will run special trains to major cities from New Delhi starting May 12. The railways, which will resume select passenger train services from Tuesday, said bare minimum reservation counters will be open on the routes of these special trains for MPs and freedom fighters among others while bookings will be available only on the IRCTC website (www.irctc.co.in) for the general quota passengers.
Officials said that because the trains that will be initially running are few, the concession type has to be limited. Ticket fare concessions can only be availed by patients, students and people with disabilities while no concessions for senior citizens are applicable.
The officials further added that railways have also earmarked reservation quota of two berths in 3AC for Divyangjans or people with disabilities and two berths in 1AC and four berths in 2AC for sitting and former parliamentarians.
The railways said that it is all set to resume train services from May 12, around 50 days after the operations except for freight trains were ceased due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown. However, the railways have been running shramik trains for migrants for the past few days for transporting thousands of stranded migrants across India due to the coronavirus lockdown.
Resuming passenger train service
With online bookings that started from Monday evening, after a gap of over a month, Indian Railways on Sunday said it will resume passenger train services in a phased manner from May 12.
To begin with, the national transporter will run 15 pairs of trains, which will include 30 return journeys. These trains will be run as special trains from New Delhi Station connecting Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi, an official statement said.
An official spokesperson stated that the fares charged from passengers will be equivalent to that of Rajdhani trains. All coaches that will run will be air-conditioned.
Railway Minister 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 on 11th May."
