Railways cancels slew of spl trains across zones

New Delhi: With the massive outbreak of COVID cases across the country, the Northern Railways decided to discontinue 28 special Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto express till the next notice. In the latest order, it stated the reason as low patronization.

02001/02002 Shatabdi SPL (Habibganj - New Delhi), 02005/02006 Shatabdi SPL (New Delhi - Kalka), 02013/02014 Shatabdi SPL (New Delhi - Amritsar), 02017/02018 Shatabdi SPL (New Delhi - Dehradun), 02039/02040 Shatabdi SPL (Kathgodam - New Delhi) and 02055/02056 Jan Shatabdi SPL (New Delhi - Dehradun) are among them.

Earlier, the railway board chairman Suneet Sharma informed the Millennium Post that the rail board is in talks with all the zones and based on the occupancy rate, the services will be suspended.

These trains are mainly bound to Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu, Jharkhand, Pune and Punjab. Further, the Southern Railways cancelled 28 trains running within Tamil Nadu and 22 inter-state trains till May-end due to poor occupancy. 02636 Madurai- Chennai Vaigai SPL, 02606 Karaikudi- Chennai Pallavan SPL, 02613/02614 Chennai- Madurai-Chennai Tejas SPL are among them.

On Wednesday, the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced the suspension of local train services in the state.

The Central Railways has also 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.

Moreover, the eastern railways discontinued 16 special trains from May 7, specially Delhi -bound. Indian Railways has been running several special trains for passengers since last year after it suspended all regular passenger train services.

Last month also, the Indian Railways had cancelled around 40 train services due to low occupancy.

Coronavirus cases hit a record daily high with 4,12,262 new infections and deaths around 4000.

The tally of COVID cases has reached 2,10,77,410 and the death toll to 2,30,168, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Thursday.