The earlier meeting was held after the Indian Railways wrote to the state government and expressed its readiness to resume suburban or local train services in the state.After meeting senior officials of Eastern Railways and South-Eastern Railways, the state government on Tuesday wrote to the Railways requesting it “to run sufficient number of suburban local trains [after resumption of services] for the daily passengers connecting different suburban nodes with Howrah and Sealdah with strict observance of Covid-19 norms, including proper sanitisation, physical distancing and mandatory wearing of masks to curb the spread of the virus”
On Monday, the state government and Railways held a meeting to deliberate on resumption of local train services around Kolkata that were closed since the lockdown was announced in March.
Sources said the Railways had proposed that local trains could be run with 50 per cent of passenger strength. Railways officials and the state government will meet again on Wednesday to firm up plans on resumption of services. A final decision would be taken after another meeting on November 5, sources said.
The earlier meeting was held after the Indian Railways wrote to the state government and expressed its readiness to resume suburban or local train services in the state.
A senior state government official said, “It is likely that local train services may resume soon. The state government is ready to give all possible support to normalise the situation as it did in the case of Metro Rail.”