Ambala railway division sees 65K ticket cancellations in 6 days, ₹3 cr refunded amid corona virus outbreak

With people restricting their travel plans amid the coronavirus outbreak, the Ambala division of Northern Railways has seen as many as 64,652 ticket cancellations from March 11 to 16, which is more than double the number of cancellations recorded for the same period last year.

As per the data shared by the office of divisional commercial manager (DCM), Ambala Cantonment, the railways has had to refund ₹3.2 crore against the cancellations from the division in the last six days. For the same period last year, the refunded amount was ₹1.4 crore against 31,500 cancelled tickets.

There are 137 railway stations under the division, which cover almost 60% area of Punjab, parts of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and the Union Territory of Chandigarh.

Divisional railway manager, Ambala, Gurinder Mohan Singh, said, “The ticket cancellation due to corona outbreak has seen a rise in the last few days and it is likely to increase even more in the coming days. The IRCTC (Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation) shares the ticket cancellation data everyday and based on that, if we find two or three trains going in the same direction, we cancel the trains with less occupancy.”

4 WEEKLY TRAINS SUSPENDED

The division, on Wednesday, announced the cancellation of four weekly express trains (to and fro) in view of poor occupancy. The Jabalpur-Attari weekly (01709) which departs on Saturdays has been suspended till March 28. The Attari-Jabalpur weekly (01710, Sunday) Express will not be running on March 22 and 29. The Jabalpur-Attari weekly express (01707, Tuesday) stands cancelled till March 31 while the Attari-Jabalpur weekly (01708, Wednesday) express has been cancelled till April 1.

PLATFORM TICKET RATE HIKED

The division has also hiked the rate of platform ticket from ₹10 to ₹50 from March 19 to April 15, to restrict unnecessary gathering of the public at railway stations.