The Indian Railways has cancelled all tickets for regular passenger trains, including mail/express and suburban services booked to travel on or before June 30.

In a statement released on Thursday morning, the Railways said that a full refund would be given to all tickets booked till June 30.

It further clarified that the ‘Shramik Special’ trains — being run to transport stranded transport migrant workers back to their natives — and the 15 pairs of special trains from New Delhi will continue to ply as usual.

The Indian Railways resumed its passenger trains from Tuesday morning almost 45 days after services were suspended on March 25 in the wake of the nationwide lockdown announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fight the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Government is running 15 pairs of air-conditioned trains, for which bookings started from May 11 at 6 pm on the IRCTC website.

These special trains run from the New Delhi Station connecting 15 important cities of the country — Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi.

These special trains have only air conditioned classes — First, Second and Third tier AC. The fare structure for the special trains shall be applicable for the regular time table as Rajdhani trains, excluding catering charges.

The Railways had started to run ‘Shramik Special’ trains from May 1 to transport stranded migrant workers, students, pilgrims and tourists.

Lakhs of migrant workers, students and others had been left stranded – without jobs, money, food or shelter – in states far from their own after the nationwide lockdown imposed on March 25.

As per a modification in the guidelines on the movement of stranded persons by ‘Shramik Special’ trains, the Railways on Monday informed that the trains will now have up to three stops at the destination state.

It further said that the ‘Shramik Special’ trains will now run with full capacity, ie, equal to the number of sleeper berths.

The ‘Shramik Special’ trains have 24 coaches with a capacity to carry 72 passengers in each coach.

In view of the development, these trains will now carry around 1,700 passengers instead of the current 1,200.

Earlier, these trains were running with 54 passengers in each coach due to social distancing norms.