Indian Railways Cancels All Regular Trains Till August 12

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NEW DELHI: Railways has decided to cancel all the regular timetabled passenger services including Mail/Express, passenger and suburban Service up to 12th August this year.

However, all special trains — 12 pairs running on the Rajdhani routes since May 12 and 100 pairs operating since June 1 — will continue, they said. While 30 Rajdhani-like AC trains were started initially, the IRCTC began 200 more trains since 1 June.

The limited special suburban services which began recently in Mumbai to ferry essential services personnel identified by the local authorities will also continue to run, officials said.

All the tickets booked for regular time table trains, for the journey date from July 1 to 12th August will be cancelled and a full refund will be given to the passengers.

In case of train cancellations, Indian Railways refunds the full amount to passengers, however, the advise is that passengers should refrain from going to the IRCTC website to cancel their booking. The refund will be automatically credited to the user’s account once the train is cancelled in our system, IRCTC has said for online train ticket bookings.

Earlier, the Railways had cancelled all trains till June 30.

Since 25 March 2020, when the nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic began, all regular train services of the national transporter have been cancelled by Indian Railways. However, to ferry those who are stranded and those who have to undertake urgent train journeys, the Indian Railways started IRCTC special trains services from 12 May 2020 onwards.

Initially, the IRCTC special train services consisted of 30 Rajdhani-style AC trains, including the to-and-fro journeys, but from 1 June 2020, additional 200 IRCTC special trains were introduced including non-AC sleeper train services.

To travel on these IRCTC special trains, tickets can be booked on the IRCTC website (irctc.co.in) or IRCTC mobile application, at reservation counters, post offices, through agents, etc.

All the passenger trains that are currently being operated by Indian Railways are fully reserved services with limited waitlisted tickets.

To prevent novel coronavirus infection, all those who are commencing train journeys on these special trains must follow certain guidelines like downloading Aarogya Setu application, social distancing, wearing of masks, thermal screening at stations, etc.

A railway spokesperson said during the lockdown period booking of tickets was allowed till April 14 with an advance reservation period of 120 days.

“Some of the passengers had booked tickets for regular trains being run before lockdown for the journey up to 12 August (120 days from 14 April). In order to facilitate full refunds to those passengers who had booked tickets on or prior to April 14, 2020, these bookings have been cancelled,” he said.

The spokesperson said the Railways is monitoring occupancy position of these special trains on a regular basis and whenever a decision is taken to introduce new special trains, its schedule will be notified.

Regular train services have been disrupted days ahead of the nationwide lockdown which began from March 25. The Railways has also run more than 4,000 Shramik Special trains since May 1 to ferry migrant workers back to their home states.

Other than these services, the entire passenger services had been non-operational. However, it continued to run its freight and parcel services.

from League of India