On March 24, a nationwide lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. All services barring essential services had to be shut down. All the public transport services, including the local trains and the express trains, were shut down in a bid to curb the spread of coronavirus.
The long-distance trains were cancelled as well and Railways had assured its passengers that they will receive a refund for the cancelled trains. Accordingly, Western Railways has refunded close to ₹134 crores to 21.23 lakh passengers who had booked tickets between March 1 and April 4.
In the abovementioned time-span, 9 lakh passengers from Mumbai had booked tickets in Western Railway's long-distance trains and the rail corporation has refunded ₹63 crores to them.
Earlier, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) had asked the people to not cancel the tickets booked online for trains that have been cancelled due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The rail corporation had assured its passengers that they will get a full refund for these tickets automatically.
As per data by Western Railway, 20.76 lakh passengers who had booked tickets for the journey in March received a refund of 132.25 crores. Whereas between April 1 and April 4, 22,427 passengers had booked tickets and received a refund of 2.23 crores from Western Railway.
The rail corporation has suffered a considerable amount of loss owing to the coronavirus pandemic. According to Western Railways, as a result of this shutdown, they have to bear losses to the tunes of ₹207 crores.
The data further displayed that on March 22 itself, Western Railways had suffered losses of ₹79 crores, which is the most it has suffered in a day. After which, till March 24 the losses were recorded to be ₹107 crores, till March 26 Western Railways had bore loses worth ₹135 crores, and by March 31, it had recorded losses of ₹207.11 crores.
Share
Tweet
