Indian Railways now have planned to progressively resume passenger train operations from Tuesday onwards. According to a government notification, passenger train service will begin with 15 pairs of special trains. These trains will run as special trains from New Delhi Station to major stations across the country.
The government notice noted that these special trains would be run from New Delhi to various places such namely Dibrugarh, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai Central, Madgaon, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi.
All air-conditioned services firstly will begin on 15 Rajdhani routes and the fare would be equal to that of the super-fast train.
Bookings for these trains was expected to start at 4 pm on Monday, but the official website of online booking (IRCTC) was crashed. When the site was supposed to run in order to book reservations, the users faced difficulty in logging in or trying to reserve tickets.
Indian Railways delayed the timing of bookings for the special 15 pairs of trains by two hours. Railways said, "Booking for 15 special trains delayed by two hours, will begin at 6 pm now."
Ticket booking counters at the railway stations shall remain closed, and no counter tickets shall be issued as per the guidelines of Ministry of Railways.
Only passengers with legally confirmed tickets will be allowed to enter the stations. It will be compulsory for the travellers to wear face cover and experience screening at departure, and only asymptomatic travellers will be permitted to board the train.
Subsequently, Indian Railways shall jump more special services on new routes, based on the accessible coaches after reserving 20,000 coaches for coronavirus care centres and an adequate number of coaches being kept to allow operation of up to 300 trains every day as 'Shramik Special' for migrants workers.
