Train services in India to resume from tomorrow, bookings open today

New Delhi : The Indian Railways will be resuming its services to 15 destinations in the country from May 12, the government announced on Sunday. The passenger train services were suspended on March 24 amid lockdown and only goods trains were running to ensure essential items delivery.

According to an order by the Railway Ministry, Bookings for the trains – all originating from the New Delhi Railway Station – will begin from Monday 4 pm. Meanwhile, the ticket reservations can be made only via IRCTC website and no ticket counter will remain operational.

According to a news report by Hindustan Times, a similar arrangement is being made in the aviation sector too but no official date has been announced on when the flight services will resume.

Sunday’s order is seen as another big step towards normalcy with the government already providing area-specific relaxations to private employers, businesses and small shops that are gasping for survival due to the economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown prompted by it.

“Railways plans to gradually restart passenger train operations from 12th May, 2020, initially with 15 pairs of special trains [30 trips] connecting New Delhi with major stations across India. Booking in these trains will start at 4 pm on 11th May,” railways minister Piyush Goyal tweeted.

These trains will run to Dibrugarh (Assam), Agartala (Tripura), Howrah (West Bengal), Patna (Bihar), Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh), Ranchi (Jharkhand), Bhubaneswar (Odisha), Secunderabad (Telangana), Bengaluru (Karnataka), Chennai (Tamil Nadu), Thiruvananthapuram (Kerala), Madgaon (Goa), Mumbai Central (Maharashtra), Ahmedabad (Gujarat) and Jammu Tawi ( Jammu and Kashmir).

Face masks are a must for passengers boarding these trains, which will only have air-conditioned (AC) coaches and charge fares equivalent to that in premium Rajdhani trains, according to a railway ministry official who did not want to be named. People will be screened at the station and those not showing symptoms of the Covid-19 disease will be allowed to travel.

In a separate statement from the ministry, the Railways will also increase the number of trains on other routes based on the availability of coaches as 20,000 coaches have been reserved for COVID-19 emergency facility.

“Further details including train schedule will be issued separately in due course,” the ministry official said. The schedule for these is expected to be shared on Monday.