The Indian Railway Catering And Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has shifted the online booking timings for the reservation in passenger trains on its website to 1800 hours or 6.00 pm on May 11 from previously fixed 1600 hours or 4.00 pm.
The official website of the IRCTC showed a message written in English and Hindi saying, “Booking will start at 18:00 hours.”
“Special trains are being uploaded in system. Booking will start soon,” said IRCTC in a tweet.
On late Sunday evening, Indian Railways had announced that it will gradually resume passenger train services from May 12 and bookings in these trains will begin at 4 pm on May 11 and will be available only on the IRCTC website.
Initially, all air-conditioned services will begin on 15 Rajdhani routes and the fare would be equivalent to that of the super-fast train, it said.
The special trains will run from New Delhi to Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi.
All passenger services were suspended due to a lockdown announced on March 25 and the railways later started the on-demand Shramik Specials to ferry migrants stranded across the country. It, however, has been running freight and parcel services.
Post the announcement, IRCTC shares on the BSE rose by 5 per cent to end at Rs 1,302.85.