Migrant workers | Reports of ‘lost’ trains fake, says Railways

“Only four of 3840 trains since May 1 have taken over three days to reach their destinations”

Railway Board Chairman V.K. Yadav on Friday termed reports of Shramik Special trains “getting lost” as “fake news,” and said only four trains of a total of 3,840 run so far since May 1 have taken more than 72 hours to reach their destinations.

He said only 1.8% of all such trains run so far, or 71 trains, were diverted and even that only between May 20 and 24, as 90% of the Shramik Special trains run in the four days were bound for Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and this had led to network congestion.

Among the destination-States of the diverted trains were Bihar (51), Uttar Pradesh (16), Jharkhand (2) and Assam and Manipur (1 each). Among the originating-States were Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan.

The statement comes amid severe criticism of the Indian Railways for Shramik Special trains taking longer routes and lack of proper food and drink.

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“In normal times, catering is done by IRCTC via contractors,” said Mr. Yadav. “In the beginning, many of them didn’t want to distribute food inside the trains due to coronavirus... Initially, we started keeping food packets as per the number of passengers in the train... some issues came up in sharing the food, which is understandable... These incidents happened in some 2-3% of the trains. These are not normal times... whatever lessons we learnt, we used them to improve our services.”

He stressed that 90% of the trains, in fact, were running at greater speeds that the normal Mail Express trains, and there was a delay of a couple of hours in about 10% of them.

To a query on the incidents of death on board such trains, Mr. Yadav said the Railways was compiling a list of people who died on the Shramik Special trains from the State governments. “The set protocol is that local State police investigate the deaths, including the reason for the death. We have seen reports that people died due to starvation. We have analysed them and there was no shortage of food and drinks on these trains.”

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Till May 28, Mr Yadav said, 3,840 Shramik Specials operated ferrying a total of 52 lakh passengers. While the demand for these trains was coming down gradually, Railways would keep running them as long as there was demand. As of now, there was demand for around 450 trains.

Mr Yadav said the Railways had accommodated all requests received from sending States and 1528 such trains were run in the last week of the month (May 22-May 28), 279 of them on May 20.