Indian Railways last month announced the operation of over 120 special superfast trains to cater to the influx of passengers. However, commuters are finding it difficult to get confirmed berths for metropolitan cities as travel demand has increased significantly due to the easing of COVID-19 restrictions and reopening of offices, colleges and schools.
Superfast trains like Rajdhani Express, Shatabdi Express and Duronto Express are running at 100 percent capacity since Holi. Travelers planning to travel to cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Kolkata and Kochi are facing the most problems with booking.
With Covid-19 cases and easing of restrictions, educational institutions and offices have reopened pan-India, so has the number of bookings. Due to this, black marketing of railway tickets among touts has also increased.
Read also: India’s first underwater metro tunnel in Kolkata to be ready by 2023
Railways said that the Railway Protection Force (RPF) recently arrested 1,459 touts and blocked 366 IRCTC agent IDs and 6,751 personal IDs as part of a month-long all-India campaign against illegal ticketing.
The campaign, ‘Operation Available’, was conducted after the resumption of long-distance train services, as festival and summer rush expected a sharp rise in demand for reserved train seats, it said.
“Taking into account the inputs, Railway Protection Force (RPF) intensified its efforts and launched a pan-India campaign against the activities of touts in the month of March 2022. The campaign was extremely successful and resulted in the death of 1,459 touts. Arrests took place. Out of which 341 were authorized IRCTC agents but were also involved in touting railway tickets. The process of blacklisting these IRCTC agents and blocking 366 IRCTC agent IDs and 6,751 personal IDs is being initiated,” said Railways. said in a statement.
The number of arrests is about 3.64 times the figure for the month of February. These touts illegally seized and blocked future travel tickets worth over Rs 65 lakh, making these seats available to genuine passengers, the statement said.
There are over 1800 express trains running in India which is more than the number of trains running before the COVID-19 pandemic.
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