New Delhi, May 11: Shortly after the official website of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) faced outage, the nodal rail body issued a statement that the technical issue would be resolved and train bookings would resume from 6 pm. Earlier, the online bookings were scheduled to start from 4 pm. The website - irctc.co.in, however, went down due to a temporary glitch. IRCTC Website Down, Citizens Unable to Book Train Tickets on irctc.co.in.

"Data pertaining to special trains is being fed on the Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) website. Train ticket bookings will be available in a short while. Please wait. Inconvenience is regretted," the Ministry of Railways had said after the website faced outage.

The resumption of ticket bookings from today was announced by the government last night. In a statement issued by the Railways, it stated that that regular passenger services would be gradually resumed from May 12.

Online Bookings to Resume at 6 PM

On the inaugural day of trains' resumption, the Railways will operate along with 15 routes, originating from New Delhi. The trains leaving from the national capital will also make a return journey with passengers after reaching the destination. Notably, the train would comprise of only AC coaches and only asymptomatic passengers would be allowed to board.

"Indian Railways plans to gradually restart passenger train operations from 12th May, 2020, initially with 15 pairs of trains (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," said the Railways statement.

"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 adequate number of coaches being reserved to enable operation of up to 300 trains everyday as “Shramik Special” for stranded migrants," it added.

 

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 11, 2020 05:15 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).