India / 1.49 lakh tickets booked in 2 hours for 1st set of trains from June 1

New Delhi: Indian Railways on Thursday, 21 May, said that within two hours of online booking opening, 1,49,025 tickets were booked for the first set of 73 special passenger trains that will be run from 1 June.

The booking began at 10 am on Thursday. Shortly after, the IRCTC also tweeted saying, “Website is working fine. Tickets are getting booked.”

A Railways Ministry spokesperson said that only online e-ticketing will be done through the IRCTC website or through its mobile application.

Indian Railways on Wednesday had released a list of 200 new passenger trains that will start running from 1 June along with a new set of guidelines. The online bookings for the trains will begin on 21 May.

Railways Minister Piyush Goyal said, “Booking of train tickets will resume at around 1.7 lakh common service centres from on Friday, 22 May, across the country. Bookings will also resume at counters of different stations in the next 2-3 days. We are developing a protocol in this regard.”

He also said, “some states did not cooperate with us to run special trains for sending back migrant workers to their homes. I think there are around 40 lakh people who want to return to West Bengal but only 27 special trains have entered the state so far.”

The new guidelines released by Railways is as following:

The trains shall run from 1 June and booking of all these trains will commence from 10 am on 21 May

These will be fully reserved trains having both AC, non-AC classes; general coaches shall also have reserved seats for sitting

Second seating (2S) fare shall be charged for general coaches being reserved; seat to all passengers

Only online tickets allowed to be booked; advance reservation period shall be maximum 30 days for trains to be run from 1 June

RAC, waitlist to be generated but waiting list ticket-holders not permitted to board trains to be run from 1 June

‘Tickets Booked Via Agents Not Accepted’

“No tickets will be booked across the reservation counter on any railway station. Booking of tickets through 'agents' — both IRCTC and railway — shall not be permitted,” Railway Minister Piyush Goya had earlier said.

Goyal had on Tuesday announced that Indian Railways will resume the services of 200 special non-airconditioned trains and bookings for them will start soon.

In a series of tweets, Goyal had said, “In a major relief to the migrant workers, 200 Shramik Special trains will run today. And in the coming days these services will be increased on a large scale.”

“Besides this, Indian Railways from 1 June will run 200 non-AC trains on timetable. Online bookings for the same will start soon,” he said.

“Provision for pre-paid meal booking, e-catering shall be disabled. However, IRCTC shall make provision for limited eatables and packaged drinking water on payment basis only in limited trains, having pantry car attached,” he added, adding passengers are encouraged to carry their own food and drinking water.

The Railways also said that only four categories of Divyangjan concession and 11 categories of patient concessions are permitted in these special trains.

Aarogya Setu app is mandatory for any passenger to travel on these 200 special trains.

The announcement came a week after the national transporter started running the 15 pairs of special air conditioned trains.

He also appealed the state governments to help the migrant workers and list their names and provide it to railways so that it can run more Shramik Special trains.

“Migrant workers are requested to stay at their locations, soon railways will transport them to their destination,” he said in another tweet.

The Indian Railways suspended the passenger, mail and express train services on 25 March amid the nationwide lockdown to combat the spread of novel coronavirus outbreak.

The national transporter has started to run the Shramik Special trains from 1 May to transport the stranded migrant workers, students, pilgrims and tourists.

Till date, the national transporter has operated a total of 1,595 Shramik Special trains from various states across the country and transported more than 21 lakh passengers.The railways also started to run the 15 pairs of Special AC trains to different parts of the country.

During the nationwide lockdown, railways has also suspended the booking of the passenger tickets until further orders.