New Delhi: Last week the Indian Railways decided to resume normal passenger train operations. It directed the zonal railways to remove the ‘special’ tag for mail and express trains and go back to the pre-pandemic ticket prices with immediate effect. This measure is expected to reduce passenger fares by about 15% in Indian Railways.
Business Standard quoted a senior Railway Ministry official as saying, “Special trains introduced during the Kovid-19 epidemic are being replaced by normal train services. This will result in reduction of around 15% in passenger fares across the board.
Around 1700 such trains, which were given the tag of ‘special’, will see a reduction in fares in the coming days.
During the first six months of the current financial year, the national transporter carried 1180.19 million passengers from 69.88 million during the corresponding period of the previous financial year. Indian Railways has earned Rs 15,434.18 crore from passenger fares in the current financial year till September, which was Rs 1,258.74 crore till September 2020.
This is much less than the national transporter’s pre-pandemic period from passenger fares. In 2019-20, the Railways had ferrying 4,173.52 million passengers and earned Rs 26,642.73 crore as of September 2019.
However, Indian Railways has decided to continue with the other measures that were taken to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. These include a ban on over-the-counter sale of tickets, non-serving of food in trains and higher rates for platform tickets.
“The purpose of higher rates for platform tickets is to continue to deter crowding at railway stations. As the COVID-19 pandemic is still around, we will continue to allow over-the-counter sale of tickets or not serving food on Indian Railways.
In order to normalize operations, the Passenger Reservation System (PRS) will remain closed for six hours during the night lean business hours for the next 7 days. This is being done to enable up-gradation of system data and updating of new train numbers, an official statement said.
