Give consent of state quarantine before booking rail ticket
New Delhi, May 16 (IANS) Learning from the ruckus created by passengers at Bengaluru earlier this week, now the passengers booking tickets for the Rajdhani Special trains will have to first confirm that they are aware of the quarantine protocol of the destination states, then only can they proceed to book the tickets, officials said on Saturday.
According to IRCTC officials, now, before finally proceeding to book a ticket, a pop-up will appear on the computer or mobile screen asking passengers to confirm if they had read the health advisory of the destination state and agree to abide by them.
Officials said now a passenger need to check “agree” to be able to book tickets.
The message will be displayed in Hindi as well as English. It also asks the passenger to download the government’s contact-tracing app, Aarogya Setu.
The official said that if the passenger selects disagree, then he won’t be able to book the ticket and will be returned to the reservation page.
The official said that changes in the IRCTC website and mobile application have been made after the incident on May 14 at Bengaluru railway station where many passengers refused to agree to the Karnataka government’s quarantine rules.
After 140 passengers of a special Rajdhani from Delhi to Bengaluru had to be hauled back earlier this week because they refused to go to institutional quarantine for 14 days, Indian Railways has decided to add this feature to its IRCTC website.
The passengers had refused to go into quarantine in Bengaluru and they became the responsibility of the Railways as the state government refused to let them get out of the station.
Following the refusal by the passengers to go into quatantine, Railways then attached an extra coach to the special Rajdhani that was due to leave for Delhi.
On Sunday, Railways decided to run 15 pairs of Special Rajdhani trains for all of passengers beside Shramik specials for stranded labourers, pilgrims, students and others.
The special Rajdhanis are travelling to and from 15 major cities connecting Delhi.
More trains are slated to be introduced with non-AC classes as well, but the matter has not been finalised yet and Railways is also awaiting the Centre’s final guidelines for extension of lockdown which are due Sunday.
–IANS
aks/prs
