The Railway Board on Thursday said that all regular mail, express and passenger services as well as suburban trains have been canceled till August 12, amid the rising number of coronavirus cases in the country.
“It has also been decided that all the tickets booked for the regular timetabled trains for the journey date from 01.07.20 to 12.08.20 also stand canceled and a full refund will be generated,” said the Railway Board.
Earlier, the Railways had canceled all trains till June 30.
However, all special trains – 15 pairs (30) running on the Rajdhani routes from May 12 and another 100 pairs running since June 1 – would continue to operate, the national transporter said. Special Rajdhani and Special Mail/Express services were started on 12 May and 1 June, respectively.
The limited special suburban services which began recently in Mumbai to ferry essential services personnel identified by the local authorities will also continue to run, officials said.
According to a source, the decision to cancel trains was taken keeping in mind the rising number of coronavirus cases in the country.
The Indian Railways had resumed its limited services to run at full capacity on May 12 after a hiatus of nearly two months after all the trains were canceled due to the coronavirus-triggered lockdown.
On June 1, in the second phase of graded resumption of passenger train operations, it pushed into service 100 more trains, including 17 Jan Shatabdi, five Durontos, and a number of traditionally popular mail or express trains to various parts of India.
Earlier this week, the Indian Railways has decided to provide a full refund for all regular train tickets booked before or on 14 April 2020. Bookings of a regular train ticket for a date 120 days after 14 April 2020, will be canceled and IRCTC will initiate a full refund automatically.
All regular train services were canceled since 25 March when the lockdown in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic began. The IRCTC has suspended advance reservations for regular train services from 15 April 15.
While 30 Rajdhani-like AC trains were started initially, the IRCTC began 200 more trains since 1 June.
