Attention, Indian Railways passengers! There is a morphed image that is doing rounds is the resumption of normal train service by the Indian Railways from February 1, 2021.
With the number of cases of covid-19 falling in the country, it is expected that the Railways will resume the train services like pre-covid times.
However, the government has officially denied the resumption of normal train services from 01 February and termed the image doing rounds in social media as ‘fake news’.
Railway officials have often said that they are constantly monitoring the situation in the country and will resume normal train services after having a discussion with all the concerned ministries in the government.
Recently, Press Information Bureau (PIB), through its tweet has denied the resumption of train services from 01 February and busted the fake news which was doing rounds in social media.
Earlier this month, there were media reports on Railways charging extra fares from passengers. The Railway Ministry has claimed that these reports are misleading and not based on all the facts. The national transporter had started Festival or Holiday special trains to clear the extra rush of passengers. According to the Railway Ministry, the fare for such train services has been kept a little higher since the year 2015. This is an established practice and nothing new has been being done this year regarding this. The ministry said passenger train operations have always been subsidized by Indian Railways. The national transporter bears loss for travel by passenger.
Even in COVID-19 pandemic times, Indian Railways has been running trains. In many sections, the national transporter is running in low occupancy and still operating in public welfare.
The number of trains is constantly being increased in a graded manner. Keeping in view a range of factors as well as operational circumstances, full restoration of regular passenger train services, to pre-pandemic times, is to be considered, the Railway Ministry had said.
Railways had stopped the normal operations in March last year to stop the spread of covid-19 in the country.
Mean-while, India’s COVID-19 tally mounted to 1,06,89,527 with 12,689 new cases in a day, while 1,03,59,305 people have recuperated from the infection so far pushing the national recovery rate to 96.91 percent on Wednesday, according to the Union Health Ministry’s data.
With 137 more fatalities, the deaths reached 1,53,724, the data updated at 8 am showed.
The COVID-19 case fatality rate stands at 1.44 percent.
There are 1,76,498 active cases of coronavirus infection in the country which comprise 1.65 percent of the total caseload, the data stated.
According to the ICMR, a cumulative total of 19,36,13,120 samples have been tested up to January 26 with 5,50,426 samples being tested on Tuesday.
