In a surprising development, Indian Railways on Monday said that the Shramik Special trains for migrant workers will now run with full capacity of 1,700 passengers and not with the current capacity of 1,200 passengers.
The Railways has also issued an order on special trains for migrants directing the railway zones to provide three stoppages in the destination state other than the final stop.
Sources told Zee Media that the Railways has a capacity to run 300 trains per day and it wants to maximise it in order to trasnport as many migrants as possible over the next few days.
According to the Railways, the capacity of the train should be equal to the sleeper berths available on the trains. Notably, there are 24 coaches in Shramik Special trains and each coach has the capacity to 72 passengers. Currently, each Shramik train is running with 54 passengers in each coach due to social distancing norms imposed due to the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak.
On Sunday (May 10), Indian Railways had announced that it was planning to gradually restart passenger train operations from May 12, 2020. Indian Railways announced that the services will restart initially with 15 pairs of trains (30 return journeys). These trains will be run as special trains from New Delhi Station connecting Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi.
Indian Railways also announced that tickets can only be booked online via IRCTC website or through the Mobile App from 4 pm on Monday (May 11) and ticket counters will remain closed and no counter tickets (including platform tickets) will be issued for the time being.
