BHUBANESWAR: The East Coast Railway (ECoR) has cancelled around 2.36 lakh tickets since March 22 due to cancelation of
regular passenger train services till August 12 in view of the
pandemic situation.
ECoR sources said around 6.82 lakh passengers had booked tickets for the train travel. After cancellation of trains, the Railways will refund around Rs 34.6 crore ticket money to passengers.
In
Khurda Road railway division, a total of 95,629 tickets have been cancelled between March 22 and August 12. The Railways will refund the ticket money of Rs 15.31 crore to 2.59 lakh passengers.
A total of 28,216 tickets have been cancelled by Sambalpur railway division. Around Rs 4.56 crore will be returned to the passengers' account by the Railways. Similarly, Waltair division has cancelled 1,12,392 tickets and started returning ticket amount of Rs 14.78 crore to the passengers.
On June 25, the Railway Board has cancelled services of all regular mail/express trains including premium trains, intercity trains and local passenger trains including MEMU services up to August 12. Earlier it was cancelled up to midnight of June 30.
ECoR sources said all the tickets booked for the regular time-tabled trains have been cancelled. "We have started refunding full ticket money according to the guidelines," said a statement of the railway zone.
However, services of special trains will not be stopped. ECoR has extended the services of six intra-state trains to July 31. These special trains started from June 8 are connecting Bhubaneswar with Koraput, Balangir, Sambalpur, Rourkela, Bhadrak and Berhampur.
Besides, one Bhubaneswar-New Delhi Rajdhani special train started from May 13 is running along with nine other inter-state trains (started from June 1).