Railways adds more special trains as Covid-19 curbs return

The Indian Railways is adding special trains to cater to the rush of migrant workers heading back to their home states from the big cities, taking current operations to nearly 70% of pre-Covid levels, as the country’s mass transport lifeline seeks to avoid a rerun of last summer’s situation where thousands of people were forced to walk hundreds of miles in the absence of rail services.

Over the past week, the railways planned 69 additional “summer special trains” to cater to the rush being reported across stations. By April 30, the national transporter has planned 133 additional trains with 88 “summer special”’ and 45 “festival special” trains.

According to railway ministry data till Wednesday, the national carrier has approved a total of 9,622 special trains and is currently running an average of 7,745 trains as against 11,283 during pre-Covid times. Of these, a total of 5,387 suburban trains are currently deployed, nearly 92% of pre-Covid capacity, with the most services operating in the central railway zone that caters to Maharashtra’s highly populated cities, including Mumbai and Pune.

“We have told zones to add special trains wherever the demand is coming. We are ready to deploy more trains. This is regular summer rush that the railways witnesses. As per the demand we are adding these summer special trains,” a senior ministry official said.

According to the railways, these additional trains are for high-demand destinations such as Gorakhpur, Patna, Darbhanga, Varanasi, Guwahati, Barauni, Prayagraj, Bokaro, Ranchi and Lucknow.

Amid lockdown curbs being announced by states with heavy migrant populations, such as Maharashtra, several cities have reported an unusual rush of people across interstate bus stations and railway stations though the railway ministry has maintained that this is the regular summer festival rush.

On May 1 last year, the Centre began operating Shramik Special trains to ferry hundreds of thousands of stranded migrants back to their home states. The national carrier last year deployed a total of 4,621 special trains and carried 6.31 million migrant workers. The trains ferried the highest number of migrants back to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the country’s most populous states, followed by Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal.

Last week railway board chairman Suneet Sharma clarified there were no plans to curtail passenger trains services. He added that the railways will continue to run trains as per the demand amid reports of migrant labourers rushing to stations due to fears of another hard lockdown.

“There is no plan to curtail or stop train services. We will run as many services as required. There is no cause for alarm…Wherever there is a surge in demand we will increase trains. There is no shortage of trains for those who want to travel. I assure everyone that trains will be provided on demand wherever the need arises,” Sharma said at a press conference.

The railways last year in March suspended regular train services during the nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of Covid while regular freight train movement continued. At present, it is running special passenger trains while regular operations have still not resumed. The ministry is restoring passenger train operations in a phased manner. It has planned more trains during April-May to clear the rush.