Indian Railways passengers note! In a move that hints at no regular Indian Railways train services till mid-August, the national transporter has announced cancellation of all regular train tickets booked up to April 14. Indian Railways has recently announced that it will refund the full booking amount to passengers of all train tickets booked up to April 14, 2020, for all regular time-tabled trains. At present, due to the COVID-19 crisis and lockdown, the national transporter is running 230 IRCTC special trains along with Shramik special trains on the Indian Railways network. Though it is being said that more trains are likely to be operated by Indian Railways to meet any demand, but sources told Financial Express Online that these passenger services may also be branded as IRCTC special trains.

In case of train cancellations, Indian Railways refunds the full amount to passengers, however the advise is that passengers should refrain from going to the IRCTC website to cancel their booking. The refund will be automatically credited to the user’s account once the train is cancelled in our system, IRCTC has said for online train ticket bookings.

In the light of the novel coronavirus outbreak, the national transporter had suspended advance reservations for regular trains from 15 April 2020. Since 25 March 2020, when the nationwide lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic began, all regular train services of the national transporter have been cancelled by Indian Railways. However, to ferry those who are stranded and those who have to undertake urgent train journeys, Piyush Goyal-led Indian Railways started IRCTC special trains services from 12 May 2020 onwards. Initially, the IRCTC special train services consisted of 30 Rajdhani-style AC trains, including the to-and-fro journeys, but from 1 June 2020, additional 200 IRCTC special trains were introduced including non-AC sleeper train services.

To travel on these IRCTC special trains, tickets can be booked on the IRCTC website (irctc.co.in) or IRCTC mobile application, at reservation counters, post offices, through agents, etc. All the passenger trains that are currently being operated by Indian Railways are fully reserved services with limited waitlisted tickets. To prevent novel coronavirus infection, all those who are commencing train journeys on these special trains must follow certain guidelines like downloading Aarogya Setu application, social distancing, wearing of masks, thermal screening at stations, etc.