The Indian Railways will resume passenger train services from Tuesday. Rail, road, and air services were suspended in March to stop the spread of COVID-19 infection. The Indian Railways is scheduled to resume passenger train services from Tuesday. The bookings for passenger services opened on Monday with 15 trains a day connecting major Indian cities. These include Delhi to Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata among others.
“Thereafter, Indian Railways shall start more special services on new routes,” the government said in a statement.
In addition, the Railways ministry shared that reservations have already been issued to over 54,000 passengers, as per ANI. The bookings for 15 passenger trains commenced on Monday. The Railways has also made the Aarogya Setu Mobile application compulsory for passengers boarding the trains.
According to ANI, the IRCTC has also revealed that all first AC three-tier AC tickets for the Howrah-New Delhi train were sold within the first 10 minutes, Moreover, all seats were reserved in 20 minutes. All AC-1 and AC-3 tickets for the Bhubaneswar-New Delhi special trains were also sold by 6.30 pm.
Currently, India has suffered 2,206 deaths from the COVID-19 outbreak, as per the ministry of health. A majority of India’s cases come from highly populated cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, and Pune.
During his video conference with the chief ministers on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that train services needed to resume in order to increase the economic activity. However, the Prime Minister also expressed that an extension for the lockdown beyond May 15 might be necessary.