In what comes as a surprising development, the Indian Railways on Monday said that the Shramik Special trains for migrant workers will now run with a full capacity of 1,700 passengers and not with the current capacity of 1,200 passengers.

The Railways has also issued an order on special trains for migrants directing the railway zones to provide three stoppages in the destination state other than the final stop.

Sources told Zee Media Newsroom that the Railways has the capacity to run 300 trains per day and it intends to maximise it in order to transport as many migrants as possible over the next few days.

According to the Railways, the capacity of a 'Shramik Special' train should be accommodative of the sleeper berths available on the trains. Notably, there are 24 coaches in Shramik Special trains and each coach has the capacity to 72 passengers. Currently, each Shramik Special train is running with 54 passengers in each coach due to social distancing norms imposed due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic outbreak.

A day earlier, the Indian Railways had officially stated that it is planning to gradually resume passenger train services from May 12. Initially, the operations will resume for 15 pairs of trains (30 return journeys). These trains will be run as special trains from New Delhi Station connecting Dibrugarh, Agartala, Howrah, Patna, Bilaspur, Ranchi, Bhubaneswar, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Madgaon, Mumbai Central, Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi, the release said.

Bookings for reservation in these trains will start at 4 pm on May 11 and will be available only on the IRCTC website (https://www.irctc.co.in/). The ministry has made it clear that ticket booking counters at the railway stations shall remain closed and no counter tickets including platform tickets shall be issued.