Tejas Express trains connecting Delhi and Lucknow, and Mumbai and Ahmedabad — that are operated by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) — will not run from the last week of November because of low occupancy after the pandemic.

From November 23, operation of Lucknow-Delhi Tejas Express will be suspended, while from November 24, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad train will not be in service.

IRCTC had restored operations for both the trains from October 17, seven months after it had to stop services, from March 19, due to the pandemic.

IRCTC has informed the Indian Railways of the same, officials told BusinessLine .

Occupancy of the the Delhi-Lucknow train had dwindled to 25 per cent compared with 70 per cent in pre-pandemic times, said sources. For the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Tejas Express, IRCTC has been seeing 35 per cent occupancy compared with 80 per cent occupancy pre-pandemic.

Recently, the Railways had cancelled other trains citing “poor” occupancy. For instance, South Central Railway zone has cancelled trains between Manmad-Dharmabad (from November 15), Visakhapatnam-Vijayawada (from November 12) and Panvel-HS Nanded (from November 23), Tirupati and Kolhapur (from November 12), among others.

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