The outbreak of coronavirus and imposition of nationwide lockdown deeply affected travel and business of people. All the trains & domestic flights were cancelled except for mandatory ones. Processing the refund of various people, the Indian Railways on Thursday announced that it has refunded about ₹1885 crores to passengers whose tickets were booked for the lockdown period & were cancelled.
The Indian Railways authorities came forward to issue an official statement mentioning, the entire amount of the ticket purchased has been refunded to the passengers.
“As the trains were cancelled en masse, the railways faced the challenge to return a huge amount of money towards refund to the rail passengers,” the railways said in a statement.
The refunds were made for tickets that were booked for the period March 21 to May 31. The refunds have been processed for tickets that were booked through online mode with the refund amount being credited to the source account.
“Due to the initiative taken by the national transporter, the passengers got their refund in time and did not face the inconvenience of visiting a PRS counter for collecting their amount,” the railway ministry further added.
The train services from Indian Railways were suspended on a temporary basis. However, various trains such as Shramik Special Trains for carrying stranded migrants, and trains carrying food grains received permission for running. Further, 30 Special AC trains were started for normal passengers in May & 200 mail-express trains were started on June 1.