With the Covid-19 pandemic worsening, Indian Railways has stepped up operations to clear the extra rush of migrants heading back to their native places by pressing over 100 additional services towards Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Bengal from big cities to avoid a rerun of last summer’s situation where thousands of people were forced to walk hundreds of miles in the absence of trains and buses.

Besides migrants, the national transporter is also pressing additional trains into service to cater to the festival rush including Kumbh Mela.

Trains are being run from Central Railway, Western Railway, Northern Railways, East Central Railway during April-May 2021 with almost 140 trains and 483 trips being planned for destinations like Gorakhpur, Patna, Darbhanga, Varanasi, Guwahati, Manduadih, Barauni, Prayagraj, Ranchi, Lucknow, Kolkata and Bhagalpur.

Railways has instructed zones to add special trains wherever demand is high.

According to the plan, the public transporter has made an elaborate arrangement to run additional services with 88 “summer special”’ and 45 “festival special” trains.

Till Wednesday, the Railways has approved a total of 9,622 special trains and is currently running an average of 7,745 trains as against 11,283 during pre-Covid-19 times.

Of these, a total of 5,387 suburban trains are currently deployed — nearly 92 per cent of pre-Covid capacity — with the most services operating in the central railway zone that caters to Maharashtra’s highly populated cities, including Mumbai and Pune.

We are planning to run additional trains this month and in May from high demand areas like Mumbai, Surat, Delhi, and Karnataka among others, said Railway Board Chairman and CEO Suneet Sharma.

At present, 1,490 special trains on an average per day are being operated, which is a 70 per cent restoration of passenger services.

During the same time last year, passenger trains were stalled because of the Covid-19 lockdown. In order to ensure safety, the Railways randomly checks passengers, uses thermal guns for checking temperature, providing only ready-to-eat meals, and not providing linen.

Railways has made available state-related arrival requirements (negative RT-PCR) to its passengers through its ticketing website.

In addition, Namburdar district in Maharashtra has sought 90 Covid-19 care coaches. Railways had earlier readied 4,000 Covid-care coaches last year, and informed the respective state governments regarding coaches’ availability.

Railways has over 100 locations — approved by the Health Ministry — where hospitals and dispensaries are being used for vaccinating both railway staff, their families, and non-railway citizens.

“We are vaccinating frontline staff like drivers, loco assistants, guards, and TTEs,” said Sharma.

Railways’ medical staff, and members of the Railway Police Force are being vaccinated, while some have received the second dose.

“We have asked the railway hospitals not to face any shortage of vaccines,” said Sharma. On May Day last year, the Railways had begun operating Shramik Special trains to ferry hundreds of thousands of stranded migrants back to their home states.

The public transporter had deployed a total of 4,621 special trains and carried 6.31 million migrant workers.