Railways to issue 'daily' tickets to fully-vaccinated to travel in trains

By A Draft Correspondent

The Maharashtra government has directed the Railways to issue single journey daily tickets for local train passengers in Mumbai from 31 October 2021, irrespective of the nature of their jobs, working in essential services or otherwise, but having received both their vaccines.

The State Disaster Management Authority sent a letter to Western and Central Railways, asking them to issue all kinds of tickets, including daily tickets that were earlier not allowed.

Till date, owing to Covid-19 protocols, the Central Railway and the Western Railway would issue only monthly passes to vaccinated commuters instead of daily tickets to curtail the crowd. The passes were issued only to those passengers who had both shots of a vaccine and had completed 14 days since their second dose. 

The rule had inconvenienced thousands of commuters who would opt to travel ticketless instead of purchasing a monthly pass for a single trip.

The order says that passes for train travel (local train and passenger trains) of all kinds - monthly/ quarterly/ half yearly - will also be allowed to be issued to the commuters who fall within the allowed category of a ‘vaccinated person’ too. It may be recalled that during the lockdown following March 23 last year, the suburban train services were suspended. 

On June 15, the partial resumption of services was announced, but only those deemed to be essential service providers were permitted to board these trains after being issued a special pass. 

The Central Railway (CR) will operate 1,774 local train services on the CR and 1,367 on the WR, up from the current 1,702 and 1,304 trains on the CR and WR, respectively. 

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