The railway ticket bookings for passenger trains, which are to resume services from May 12, has been deferred to 6pm today. It was earlier announced the bookings will open from 4pm.
The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation website experienced heavy traffic, with several users taking to social media to complain that the website was not loading. Soon after, the Ministry of Railways issued a clarification on Twitter that, “Data pertaining to special trains is being fed in the IRCTC website. Train ticket bookings will be available in a short while. Please wait. Inconvenience is regretted.”
The ministry later tweeted that the bookings will start at 6pm.
Earlier in the day, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a standard operating procedure (SOP) for the movement of people by trains.
Initially, the all air-conditioned services will begin on 15 Rajdhani routes and the fare would be equivalent to that of the super-fast train, it said. The special trains will run from New Delhi to Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi.
All passenger services were suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdown in the country announced on March 25. The railways later started the on-demand Shramik Specials to ferry migrants stranded across the country. It has been running freight and parcel services, though.
Unlike Shramik Specials, in which only 54 passengers were allowed in every coach instead of the regular 72, these trains will run on full capacity, but no concession in fare is likely to be allowed.
Ticket booking services at stations will remain closed and no counter tickets (including platform tickets) will be issued. Only passengers with valid confirmed tickets will be allowed to enter station.
