Indian Railways is helping to bring back workers, as cities gradually unlock.

During the past seven days (between June 11-17) approximately 32.56 lakh passengers including migrant workers and other passengers traveled by long distance mail express trains (with average occupancy of trains being 110.2 per cent) from areas like Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal and Odisha to various destinations including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, and Chennai areas, informed Railways in a statement.

Seeing this demand, the Railways has approved running of 660 trains, most of which are over and above the 983 trains under operation, said official sources.

These additional trains will be slowly started by zones based on local situation.

Train booking data for the next ten days (from June 19 to June 28) shows that approximately 29.15 lakh passengers including migrant workers and other passengers have been booked by long distance mail express trains from areas like Eastern UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal and Odisha to various destinations including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, and Chennai.

To facilitate the movement of migrant labour from the states of Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha to the Metros like Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai etc, Indian Railways is operating Mail or Express Specials, Holiday Specials and Summer Special trains.

All these trains are being operated as fully reserved trains keeping in view the Covid protocol. The booking for these trains is available to the traveling public through Passenger Reservation System (PRS) at the Reservation Counters and also through online mode by using e-ticketing system.

As on June 18, 983 Mail or Express and Holiday Specials (56 per cent of the pre-Covid level of 2020) are being operated by Indian Railways.

In addition, about 1309 Summer Specials have also been operated to facilitate the movement of the people wanting to return to the place of work. These Summer Specials provide connectivity primarily from states like Bihar, UP, West Bengal, Odisha and Assam to major cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Bengaluru, among others.

For the next 10 days (from June 19 to June 28) approximately 29.15 lakh passengers including migrant workers and other passengers have been booked by long distance mail express trains from areas like Eastern UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal and Odisha to various destinations including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, and Chennai areas.

The Zonal Railways are actively coordinating with various industry associations and business houses to ascertain the demand and facilitate the movement of the workers accordingly. The Summer Special trains are operating between different Origin Destination pairs like Gorakhpur-Mumbai, Bhagalpur-Mumbai, Bhubaneswar-Pune, Danapur-Pune, Barauni-Ahmedabad, Patna-Delhi, Samastipur-Mumbai, Sealdah-Delhi, Raxaul-Delhi, Saharsa-Delhi, Danapur-Secunderabad, Raxaul-Secunderabad, Patliputra-Bengaluru, Chapra-Mumbai, Guwahati-Bengaluru, Gorakhpur-Hyderabad, among others, stated railways.

comment COMMENT NOW