Over 2 lakh migrants book tickets worth Rs 45 crore to travel in special trains

New Delhi: Over two lakh passengers have booked tickets worth Rs 45.30 crore for travel in the next seven days, the railways said on Thursday.

It said 20,149 passengers travelled on the special trains on Wednesday and 25,737 are scheduled to travel on 18 special trains operating on Thursday. The total revenue generated so far for these tickets is Rs 45,30,09,675.

With the railways beginning its special passenger services on May 12 for 15 pairs of trains between Delhi and major cities of the country, officials said, over 9,000 people left the national capital on Wednesday on board nine trains.

According to data accessed by PTI, of the nine trains from Delhi on Wednesday, eight which left for Howrah, Jammu, Thiruvananthapuram, Chennai, Dibrugarh, Mumbai, Ranchi and Ahmedabad were booked beyond their capacity. Only one train, to Bihar's capital Patna, ran at 87 per cent capacity, the data showed.

Of the nine trains that left for their destinations on Wednesday, the Howrah to New Delhi train, which can carry 1,126 people at a time, had a booking for 1,377 passengers which is 122 per cent of the train's capacity.The New Delhi-Thiruvananthapuram special train was booked at 133 per cent of its capacity, and the New Delhi-Chennai train ran at 150 per cent occupancy.

Similarly, the New Delhi-Jammu Tawi special ran at 109 per cent occupancy; the New Delhi-Ranchi train at 115 per cent occupancy; the New Delhi-Mumbai Central train at 117 per cent; New Delhi-Ahmedabad at 102 per cent and the New Delhi-Dibrugarh train ran at an occupancy of 133 per cent.

"Overbooking does not mean that passengers are standing in the aisles, it just means that there is movement of people while the train is on the run. People are boarding and deboarding at halt stations and there have been multiple bookings," an official said.

Among the trains that departed from Delhi, the only train on Wednesday which did not run on its full capacity was the New Delhi-Rajendra Nagar (Patna) train which had a capacity of 1,239, but carried only 1,077 passengers making it only 87 per cent full.

Officials said the reason behind low occupancy of the train could be that Bihar has already accounted for over 100 trains which carried its workers home since May 1.