Big announcement by Indian Railways! If you had an IRCTC train ticket booked for travel on or before 30 June 2020, here is some news for you. All train tickets that were booked for regular passenger train services for travel on or before 30 June 2020 have been cancelled by Indian Railways. However, this is not applicable for Shramik and special passenger trains that are being run by the national transporter during the lockdown period due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Shramik, as well as the special trains services, started with effect from May 1 and May 12 respectively, will continue to operate, according to a statement issued by Indian Railways. For the cancelled IRCTC train tickets, full refund will be granted to railway passengers. IRCTC has said that passengers need not go online to cancel their train tickets, the refund will be given automatically when it is processed by the system.
According to the statement issued by Indian Railways, except Shramik and special trains, all regular passenger train services including Mail or Express trains, passenger and suburban or local train services will remain cancelled until further advice. Indian Railways had suspended its regular train operations when the lockdown began in March, but continued to take ticket bookings for trains scheduled to run after April 14. But with the lockdown being extended, the national transporter suspended IRCTC advanced booking as well. Now, the decision has been taken to cancel all tickets for regular trains booked for journeys till June 30.
From 12 May 2020 onwards, 15 special passenger train services (30 including return journeys) are being operated by Indian Railways. The trains are being departed from the New Delhi railway station (NDLS) to various places including Ahmedabad, Secunderabad, Agartala, Jammu Tawi, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Ranchi, Bilaspur, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru, Dibrugarh, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Howrah.
Besides, as per the demands received from the various state governments and based on the guidelines by the Ministry of Home Affairs, several Shramik special trains are being operated from various states across India. According to Railway Ministry, as on 13 May 2020, as many as 642 Shramik Special trains were terminated in various states like Andhra Pradesh (3 Trains), Bihar (169 Trains), Odisha (38 Trains), Himachal Pradesh (1 Train), Jammu and Kashmir (3 Trains), Chattisgarh (6 Trains), Karnataka (1 Train), Maharashtra (3 Trains), Jharkhand (40 Trains), Manipur (1 Train), Rajasthan (8 Trains), Madhya Pradesh (53 Trains), Tamil Nadu (1 Train), Tripura (1 Train), Mizoram (1 Train), Uttarakhand (4 Trains), Uttar Pradesh (301 Trains), West Bengal (7 Trains), Telangana (1 Train).
