NEW DELHI, May 6: The Northern Railways on Thursday cancelled a slew of Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto Express’, stating low patronisation and rising coronavirus cases as the reason behind the decision.
The to-and-fro services of eight Shatabdi Express, two Rajdhani Express, two Duronto Express and one Vande Bharat Express are among around 28 trains that have been cancelled “till further advice” by the Northern Railways.
Among these are Shatabdis originating from Delhi to places like Kalka, Habibganj, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Rajdhani trains from Delhi to Chennai, Bilaspur, Duronto trains to Jammu Tawi and Pune.
Poor patronisation of once popular trains also indicates that a lesser number of people are travelling amidst the surge in coronavirus cases, officials said.
“The Northern Railways has decided to cancel the following special trains due to poor patronisation and a surge in COVID-19,” a NR spokesperson said.
The Central Railways has cancelled 23 passenger trains. These include Nagpur-Kolhapur special up to June 29, the CSMT-Kolhapur special up to July 1, the CSMT-Pune special up to June 30.
The officials said the Railways has delivered 161 tankers with around 2,511 tonne of liquid medical oxygen to various states across the country so far. As many as 40 Oxygen Express trains have already completed their journey so far, it said, adding 22 tankers are on the move with more than 400 tonnes of LMO for Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan and Delhi.
Till date, 174 tonnes of LMO has been off-loaded in Maharashtra, 689 tonnes in Uttar Pradesh, 190 tonnes in Madhya Pradesh, 259 tonnes in Haryana, 123 tonnes in Telangana and 1,053 tonnes in Delhi.
(Manas Dasgupta)