Amid rising coronavirus cases, the Indian railways has cancelled 28 pairs (total 56) of trains including Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Vande Bharat Express until further orders. Northern Railway said that it has decided to cancel the trains due to low occupancy owing to COVID surge and other operational reasons. The cancelled trains include 8 pairs of Shatabdi, 2 pairs of Duronto, 2 pairs of Rajdhani and one pair of Vande Bharat Express. The trains will stand cancelled from May 9 until further orders.
India continues to suffer heavily under the 2nd wave of Covid-19 with over 3.5 lakh cases being reported for the past two weeks. Railways had been extremely busy opening new train routes to ease the burden of railway travelers who have been left stranded without the service of public transport after the announcement of nationwide lockdown. But the constant surge in the covid-19 cases has left everyone feeling scared and the railway department had no other option than to stop the services of these trains for the time being.
As a safety measure the IRCTC has been thermally screening all the passengers and observing other safety measures to ensure social distancing during train journeys to avoid the spread of Coronavirus. The occupancy remained low despite all the safety protocols followed in these trains. These 56 trains are in a long line of other special trains which the railway has been forced to cancel due to low passenger demand caused by Covid-19.
Earlier Indian Railway had decided to cancel fourteen and sixteen trains on two separate occasions due to poor patronization caused by the rising COVID-19 caseload which was on a continuous rise in the country and people were facing acute oxygen shortage.
All regular passenger train services of Indian Railways were suspended when a nationwide lockdown was declared last year in March but since May 2020 special train services were started by the national transporter in a phased manner.
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