IRCTC special trains alert! Piyush Goyal-led Indian Railways has allowed for tatkal ticket booking in all IRCTC special trains that are currently running and those that will start plying from June 1. As of now, Indian Railways is running 30 AC special trains and from June 1, 200 IRCTC special trains will start running. According to the latest notification from Indian Railways, tatkal ticket booking and premium tatkal ticket booking rules for these IRCTC special trains will be same as that of regular time-tabled trains. Indian Railways has also decided to increase the advance reservation period for these 230 IRCTC special trains from 8:00 AM for the booking date of May 31 onwards. Parcel and luggage booking will also be allowed in these IRCTC special trains.
Till now, the national transporter had not been allowing tatkal ticket booking in these special trains. “All these special trains will have reserved coaches, but we have now decided to allow for tatkal ticket bookings. Premium tatkal ticket booking feature exists in some trains and will be allowed in these special trains too if the train regularly has that feature,” a senior Railway Ministry official told Financial Express Online.
Indian Railways partially resumed services with IRCTC special AC trains from May 12. While the booking for these special trains as initially allowed only on the IRCTC website (irctc.co.in) and IRCTC mobile app, the national transporter has now opened reservation counters at railway stations and has also allowed for train ticket booking at post offices.
The 200 IRCTC special trains that will run from June 1 include Janshatabdi trains, Duronto Express trains and other Mail/Express trains. The general and sleeper class coaches of these trains will also have only reserved seats. Indian Railways has fixed a maximum limit for the waitlisted tickets in each class. The 30 special trains that are currently running are all air-conditioned Rajdhani-style services.
Meanwhile, all regular passenger train bookings of Indian Railways have been cancelled till June 30. IRCTC is providing full refund to passengers on the cancellation of regular train services due to the Coronavirus lockdown.