A day after announcing the movement of passenger trains from Tuesday, the government has released a Standard Operating Procedure for the same on Monday.
“Only those passengers with confirmed e-tickets shall be allowed to enter the station,” Ministry said.
Yesterday, the Indian Railways had said that no purchase of tickets from the counter will be allowed and the counters will be made operational. Only online reservation could be done.
“The movement of passengers, as well as the driver of the vehicle transporting the passengers to and fro the railway station, shall be allowed on the basis of confirmed e-ticket,” MHA said in its guidelines.
The guidelines also said that the Ministry of Railways should ensure that at the railway station, all passengers shall be “compulsory screened” and only asymptomatic passengers are allowed to enter or bard the train.
At the entry and exit points at the station and in coaches, hand sanitizer shall be provided, it said.
Wearing a mask of face covers is compulsory for the passengers at the entry and during the travel.
During boarding and travel, all passengers will have to observe social distancing.
Initially, the services will resume for 15 pairs of trains including 30 return journeys.
“These trains will be run as special trains from New Delhi Station connecting Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi,” Ministry of Railways said in a press note.
“Thereafter, Indian Railways shall start more special services on new routes, based on the available coaches after reserving 20,000 coaches for COVID-19 care centres and an adequate number of coaches being reserved to enable operation of up to 300 trains every day as ‘Shramik Special’ for stranded migrants,” it added.
Bookings for the trains will start from May 11 at 4 pm and will be available on the IRCTC website.