Passengers opting to travel in special trains run by Indian Railways amidst COVID-19 lockdown will have to give their destination address while booking these trains.
Indian Railways has been running special trains since May 12th for 15 destinations from New Delhi with plans to start more trains in the near future. The address is being asked so that contact tracing can be done if a passenger is diagnosed with the infection.
In a separate notification, the IRCTC said that it will start issuing Waiting List tickets for trains starting from May 22nd, according to ABPlive.com. The booking for such trains will begin from today, May 15th, A limited number of wait listed tickets will be issued depending on the class, as detailed in the table below.
| Class | Maximum Waiting List |
|---|---|
| AC First Class | 20 |
| Executive Class | 20 |
| AC 2 Tier | 50 |
| AC 3 Tier | 100 |
| AC Chair Car | 100 ( Applicable only If any train with chair car is introduced in future) |
| Sleeper | 200 (Applicable only If any train with sleeper class is introduced in future) |
The notification also said other rules regarding the wait listed tickets will be applicabe to the special trains. The special trains for COVID-19 cannot be booked under Tatkal or Premium Tatkal quotas; however, quotas for Senior Citizens, Ladies, and Divyangjans will be defined as per extant instructions, the ABP Live report adds.
Indian Railways has been running special trains since May 12th connecting 15 major cities to New Delhi including Howrah, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru among others. The bookings for all these special trains can be only be done via the IRCTC mobile application or IRCTC website.
As previously informed, tickets can be booked seven days in advance for these special trains. Online cancellation is permitted if done at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure of the train and 50% booked fare will be charged as a cancellation fee.
Train services for passengers have remained suspended since a nationwide lockdown was imposed to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in March. On Thursday, Railways cancelled all regular trains until June 31st and only special trains will be run until then.
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