Railway Cancels 16 Trains

Due to the consequences of a deadly global pandemic and the continuous rising coronavirus cases in India, demand for railway travel has cratered from its peak. Keeping all of that in mind, Eastern Railway division of the Indian Railway has decided to discontinue 16 trains from May 7. The sudden fall in the number of passengers travelling by these trains is the reason behind the decision.

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 16 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 Northern Railway had decided to cancel 14 special trains 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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