New Delhi: Railways will run 15 passenger trains, including one from New Delhi to Thiruvananthapuram, from Tuesday, 50 days after it had suspended passenger services in the wake of COVID-19 lockdown.
Tickets will be sold only via IRCTC website. Booking opened on Monday.
Within 10 minutes of bookings made available, all all AC-1 and AC-3 tickets for the Howrah-New Delhi train were sold and the rest of the seats within 20 minutes. The Howrah-New Delhi train is scheduled to begin its journey from Howrah at 5:05 pm on Tuesday.
As per the ticket availability on the website, all AC-1 and AC-3 tickets for the Bhubaneswar-New Delhi special trains were also sold by 6.30 pm.
By 9.15 pm, approximately 30,000 PNRs had been generated and the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) had issued more than 54,000 passengers for the next seven days.
Trains originating from New Delhi will run to Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi, according to a release from the Railways.
Only passengers with confirmed tickets will be allowed to enter railway stations.
Ticket booking counters at railway stations will remain closed and no counter tickets (including platform tickets) will be issued.
It will be mandatory for passengers to wear face cover and undergo screening at departure and only asymptomatic passengers will be allowed to board the trains.
All passenger train services were suspended due to a lockdown announced on March 25 to contain the spread of COVID-19.
After the resumption of these 15 services, railways will start more special services on new routes, based on the available coaches after reserving 20,000 coaches for COVID-19 care centres and adequate number of coaches being reserved to enable operation of up to 300 trains everyday as Shramik Special for stranded migrants.
Last week, the Railways started operating special services to ferry migrant labourers stranded in various states to their homeland.
The railways will now run 100 'Shramik Special' trains daily to facilitate faster movement of workers, the Centre said on Monday, adding that 513 such trains have been operated since May 1 ferrying home over six lakh migrants stranded in various parts of the country amid the coronavirus lockdown.
