1,225 Million Rail Passengers Travelled During Covid-Hit 2020-21 Fiscal

Indian Railways has carried about 1225 million passengers including 63 lakh migrants and earned about Rs 15,150 crore in the passenger segment in the fiscal 2020-21 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

While in the freight sector, the Railways carried the highest ever loading of 1232.64 million tonnes in the 2020-21 fiscal despite the pandemic, the freight revenue was Rs 1,17,386 crore as compared to Rs 1,13,897 crore during 2019-20.

"It was a challenging time and we managed to run as many Shramik Specials to facilitate the travel of migrants to their native places across the country while we continued with the freight operations," said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Presently, Indian Railways is running 1,402 special train services on an average per day, out of total 1,768 Mail/Express trains including Rajdhani and Shatabdi.

Besides, a total of 5,381 suburbans and 830 passenger train services are also operational while 28 special trains are being operated as clones of highly patronised trains with high patronage.

Moreover, additional trains are being run during April-May 2021 to clear the rush in Central Railway (58) and Western Railway (60).

These trains are for destinations having high demand like Gorakhpur, Patna, Darbhanga, Varanasi, Guwahati, Barauni, Prayagraj, Bokaro, Ranchi and Lucknow etc.

According to the Railways, train services would continue as per demand.
Indian Railways has also doubled the speed of freight trains to 44 kmph from 24 kmph in the previous year.

The public transporter also ran 450 Kisan Rail services since August 2020 and transported over 1.45 lakh tonnes of agricultural produce and perishables.