1.7 lakh passengers book tickets as Indian Railways restarts operations

On the very first day of train services' resumption, there was a massive response from the people, with over 1.5 lakh passengers booking tickets till Tuesday evening across India. To be precise, 1,69,039 passengers had booked 90,331 tickets so far.

This data was released by the Railways Ministry and across all the 30 special air conditioned trains that are being run.

Almost 48 days after suspension of all passenger train services amid the coronavirus pandemic, two special air conditioned train departed from New Delhi on Tuesday evening, officials said. Such resumption of services happened from other major cities as well.

According to Northern Railway officials, the restoration of passenger train services started on Tuesday in a graded manner. The passenger train services had been suspended since March 25.

Meanwhile, Railway premises and platforms were sanitized at regular intervals to prevent infection, said Northern Railway spokesperson Deepak Kumar. Wearing masks was mandatory and passengers were encouraged to carry their own blankets, water and food for the trip, he added.

The railways has issued a time-table for trains to be run between May 12 and May 20. These daily, weekly or bi-weekly trains will run between New Delhi and all major cities of the country -- Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi.

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