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NEW DELHI: Indian railways will begin operating another 80 passenger trains or 40 pairs, and will resume operations of the Vande bharat service between Delhi and Varanasi from September 12.
Reservations for these trains will begin on September 10. The railways will also introduce “clone trains” that will run just ahead of those with a long waiting list of more than seven to ten days.
CEO and Chairman of the Railway Board, VK Yadav He said that one of the intentions of operating some of these trains is to facilitate the return of migrant workers. “When deciding the routes, we took note of a few factors, including routes where demand is high, and we also considered the Shramik Specials that were run to bring migrant workers back to their places of origin. There is a tendency for migrant workers to return to their workplace, and therefore some of the trains will meet that need, ”he added.
The list of 40 pairs of trains shows that some will run on routes, including Delhi-Gorakhpur, Yashwantpur-Gorakhpur, Muzaffarpur-Valsad, Chhapra-Chennai, Korba-Vishakhapatnam, Puri Ahmedabad, Dhanbad-Ferozpur and Bhagalpur-Delhi. Much of the migrant labor force comes from places like Gorakhpur, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur, Luchnow and Puri.
TOI on September 1 reported that the railroads moved to introduce around 100 new trains.
Yadav said that while the occupancy of the 230 existing special trains was 75% on average, it has now risen to more than 80%. Only in the case of 12 trains, the reserve is very low and the railways may interrupt services on some of those routes.
On the subject of the clone train, Yadav said that wherever there is demand for a particular train and where the waiting list is long, railways will operate such trains before actual trains. “These will have smaller stops and will meet the needs of passengers who travel long distances,” he said.
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