All trains booked for a week, to transport 1.7L passengers

All trains booked for a week, to transport 1.7L passengers

Dipak.Dash@timesgroup.com

New Delhi  13.05.2020

: By Tuesday evening, almost all 30 special trains being run by railways were booked for the first seven days. Officials said over 90,000 tickets were sold for 1.69 lakh passengers.

Nearly 8,000 passengers boarded the first eight special trains which started their journey from six different stations on Tuesday. Another nine special trains will start from the originating stations on Wednesday. “Almost all trains are booked for a week and on average each of them will accommodate between 800 to 1,100 passengers. In a week, we will be ferrying around 1.7 lakh passengers,” said an official. Railways also said nearly 6.8 lakh stranded guest workers, tourists and students have been transported by Shramik Special trains till Tuesday afternoon, which was the biggest ever evacuation exercise that the India Railways has undertaken.

According to sources, maximum booking of 12,845 berths for passengers were done on Howrah-New Delhi special trains followed by Bengaluru-New Delhi (11,643) and Dibrugarh-New Delhi (11,172). The other three special trains which saw maximum booking of passengers were Mumbai-New Delhi (10,991), New Delhi-Dibrugarh (10,722) and New Delhi-Howrah (10,174). There will be daily operation of special trains on these routes. Officials said it’s taking a couple of days for mobilisation of the rakes at the required stations for running these trains.

Meanwhile, the health department of Delhi government issued a standard operating procedure saying that all asymptomatic people reaching the national capital would be allowed to go to their respective homes.

Full report on www.toi.in

JOURNEY OF LIFETIME: Passengers at New Delhi railway station on Tuesday. Many reached the station hours before the departure time