The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways, has suspended bookings of its three private trains till April 30 in wake of the coronavirus situation in the country, that has killed 124 people in the country till 7 PM on Monday.
The bookings for the three trains — the Kashi Mahakal Express on the Varanasi-Indore route, the Lucknow-New Delhi Tejas and the Ahmedabad-Mumbai Tejas — were earlier stopped only between April 25 and April 15 during the nationwide lockdown due to the coronavirus crisis, and booking of tickets for travel after the lockdown period was allowed.
Officials said the decision to not run the trains till April 30 was taken keeping in mind that the cases of coronavirus in the country were increasing by the day.
All passengers who have booked tickets during that period will get full refunds, an India Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) official said.
Full ticket fare will be refunded automatically, without any cancellation charges, to all the users/passengers having booked tickets for journey during the above (mentioned) period. Inconvenience caused is deeply regretted. There is no need for cancellation of tickets by users,” a statement from IRCTC said.
IRCTC is also assisting people in the time of lockdown by ramping up food production at all of its kitchens across the country and provided meals to over 4 lakh people. The IRCTC has started preparing food for the people across all of its 28 locations in the country including its base kitchens.
On the other hand, Indian Railways has been working day and night and has taken the in-house production of PPEs to a mission mode.
Facilities are being geared up in Railways to make up to 1000 such protective overall for Railway Doctors & Paramedics every day. Around 17 workshops would be striving to contribute to this exercise, a release from the Ministry of Railways said.
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