Indian Railways made it mandatory for passengers to enter their destination address and pin code while booking a ticket from reservation counters. The move by the Indian Railways was initiated last year in order to carry out contact tracing during the first wave of the pandemic.
Indian Railways will also not issue any railway ticket if the full address and pin code are not mentioned while booking the ticket. A recent report said there were long queues of passengers at the Dhanbad railway station as they searched for their pin codes of their destinations at the reservation counter. The report also highlighted that several passengers who are not literate faced troubles while booking their tickets.
Indian Railways introduced this rule last year during Covid-19 citing that if a passenger tests positive then the Railways would have their travel history.
Railways record surge in ticket bookings
As the Covid-19 second wave wanes, the Indian Railways reported a boost in the number of passengers. The Indian Railways in June said that it carried 32.56 lakh passengers from states like Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand, with a huge chunk of passengers being migrant workers returning to their workplaces.
No plans to restore concessions
{{/usCountry}}No plans to restore concessions
{{/usCountry}}The government told the Parliament that there is no proposal yet to restore concessions offered to certain categories of people due to the ongoing pandemic. “In view of the pandemic and Covid protocol, concession to all categories of passengers (except four categories of Divyangjan, 11 categories of patients and students) have been withdrawn from March 20, 2020, till further advice. At present, there is no proposal to restore the concessions,” Union minister for railways Ashwini Vaishnaw told Parliament last week.