On Wednesday, over 19,000 passengers travelled by these special trains. Till date, 1.12 lakh tickets have been booked to carry over 2 lakh people in these trains.
People in huge number have been booking trains, creating pressure in the railway department since 12th May. All 30 odd trains are via Delhi. Railways have made plans on allowing a limited number of the waiting list in the special trains. They also stated that full money will be refunded to the person who booked the ticket but cannot travel due to the symptoms of coronavirus.
“If during screening, a passenger has a very high temperature/symptoms of covid-19, he shall not be allowed to travel despite having confirmed tickets. In such a case, a full refund shall be provided to the passenger,” the notice read.
The Railway Board gave the directions to its zones where it has said that the special Rajdhanis and the ones that will be notified, will now have waiting lists of up to 100 for AC 3 tier, 50 for AC 2 tier, 200 for Sleeper class, 100 for chair cars, and 20 each for First AC and Executive Class– to curb the increasing traffic for travelling. May 22 is the date for these instructions to be followed, whereas the bookings will start May 15 onwards.
It stated the waiting lists will be limited to lower classes and planning is going on to sell the seats with mixed classes like Sleepers, chair cars etc in other routes. These norms are to normalize the life of India somewhere and adapting to living with the pandemic.
As senior citizens have been requested to stay in but railways have out down guidelines for them;
“Senior citizen quota, Ladies quota, and Quota for Divyangs shall be defined as per extant instructions.”
