171 Shramik Special trains operated so far, more than 1.70 lakh migrants ferried: Railways

New Delhi, May 7

The Indian Railways, on Thursday, said it had operated a total of 171 Shramik Special trains since May 1, and ferried home over 1.70 lakh migrants stranded in various parts of the country due to the COVID-induced lockdown.

While 22 such trains had already departed on Thursday, 26 more trains were scheduled to run by Thursday night, including the first train to originate from New Delhi carrying 1,200 migrant workers to Madhya Pradesh, it said.

The Railways said it ran 56 Shramik Special trains on Wednesday.

“We are planning to run some more trains by the end of the day,” a railway spokesperson said.

Every special train has 24 coaches, each with a capacity of 72 seats. But the national transporter is allowing only 54 people in a coach to maintain social-distancing norms by not allotting the middle berth to any passenger.

While the Railways has officially not stated how much it had spent so far on these services, the cost for which the government said had been shared on an 85:15 ratio with the states, officials indicated that the national transporter had spent around Rs 80 lakh per service.

Since the beginning of the services, Gujarat remained one of the top originating stations, followed by Kerala.

Among the receiving states, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh remained the top states.

Earlier, the Railways drew flak from the opposition parties for charging for these services.

In its guidelines, the Railways said the trains would ply only if they had 90 per cent occupancy and the “states should collect the ticket fare”. PTI