First day at New Delhi station: long queues and Aarogya Setu

The first train since the closing of Mumbai Central is preparing to leave for New Delhi at 5.30pm on Tuesday. Ganesh Shirsekar

More than 4,000 passengers boarded the first three special “Rajdhani trains” from New Delhi on Tuesday when the Railways resumed services, which had been suspended for more than a month under the coronavirus blockade.

The New Delhi-Bilaspur train that started at 4pm with more than 1,000 people on board was the first Railways passenger service to start. The other two went to Dibrugarh in Assam and Bengaluru in Karnataka.

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On Tuesday, in front of the New Delhi railway station, there was a constant flow of passengers (students, migrants and professionals from inside and outside Delhi) eager to return to their families.

“We are carrying out a thermal control of the passengers when they enter the station and only asymptomatic people are allowed to enter. Only those with a confirmed ticket will be able to enter the station. The Aarogya Setu app is mandatory for passengers and we are asking those who do not have it on their phones to download it, ”said a Northern Railway spokesperson.

Special trains only have First and 2nd and 3rd level AC air conditioning. Tickets were only booked online through the IRCTC portal. Passengers were asked to bring their own food and blankets.

Read | Passenger train services starting today: from IRCTC tickets to precautions, all your questions answered

Hours before the departure of the first train, a line of passengers slowly passed the police barricades placed in front of the station’s Paharganj entrance.

Many had to take a long walk to reach the station. Among them was Sai Kumar (20), who had left his private hostel in Greater Noida at 8:30 a.m. to catch a train at 9 p.m. to Telangana, fearing that he could not find a way to get to the station.

“Everyone was telling me that there is no transportation available and that my parents were very nervous, so I decided to leave early. I walked until I hit the highway and tried to get hooked. I must have tried dialing around 40-50 cars before one finally stopped. I paid them 600 rupees and they dropped me to Mayur Vihar. There, I got an e-rickshaw that dropped me off at the station for Rs 300. In all, I must have walked about 10 km, ”said Kumar, a student of computer science and engineering at Noida International University, who arrived at the station at 3.30 pm.

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There were others who came from across the borders of Delhi. This included B Lakshmi (57), who had arrived from Bangalore on March 19 for what was supposed to be a week-long stay at an ashram in Kampil, in the Farrukhabad district of Uttar Pradesh.

“I was supposed to take a train back on March 27, but I was stuck. I was comfortable in the ashram but my family was having a hard time coping with it. So I booked my ticket yesterday and this morning I took a private taxi with two other people from Bangalore to come to Delhi. The ticket was for 2,500 rupees and the taxi cost 8,000 rupees. We also had to pay Rs 415 as a motorway toll. What will it be like for those who have no money to eat? ” she said.

More than 3,000 passengers traveled on the three special trains, said the Ministry of Railways. The first train that rolled after the closure, from New Delhi to Bilaspur, had 1,072 passengers on board, while the trains to Dibrugarh and Bengaluru each had 1,076 passengers, according to tweets published by the Ministry.

Rates depend on distance. The IRCTC website showed that for trains departing on Tuesday, an AC 3-Tier ticket to Dibrugarh was for 2,510 rupees. For Bilaspur Junction, the price was Rs 1,950, and for KSR Bengaluru, it was Rs 2,480.

Deepak Khurey (26) took off his shoes to reveal the torn soles. “I left Rewari on foot around 3 in the afternoon on Monday, with my brother-in-law and his wife, and arrived in Delhi around 5 in the morning on Tuesday. We have no money left. I have sold my phone which gave me Rs 500, but that is not enough to buy a ticket to Bilaspur. “

Prince Prajapati, twenty, and five of his friends had left on foot at 5 am from Dwarka, hoping to find some way to get a cheap ticket.

“We are all from the same village in the Deoria district of UP and we had come to Delhi in December to work as painters. But we haven’t had any jobs in the last two months. Last night we tried to book tickets, but those cost Rs 1,200 each, while none of us had more than Rs 1,000. We thought we might achieve something after we got here, but we were intimidated after seeing the large number of people online with the tickets, ”he said.

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