Mumbai: 'Onus on railways to ensure only fully vaccinated take trains'

MUMBAI: As the state government finally allowed daily train journeys from Sunday, stations witnessed a slight increase in the rush. Officials said the demand for single journey tickets was likely to go up from Monday.
In the directive to the railways to allow daily tickets, principal secretary Aseem Gupta from the State Disaster Management Authority said that from now on full vaccination would be the only mandatory condition for issuance of any kind of ticket for travel on local and passenger trains.
Gupta’s missive said it would be the responsibility of the railways to ensure only fully vaccinated people travelled on trains, irrespective of whether the traveller was from the essential or non-essential service sector.
The letter to the divisional railway managers said: “While only fully vaccinated persons are allowed to travel using monthly passes, many citizens are demanding allowing travel using daily tickets. Due to several people needing to travel through local trains and absence of permission to travel on daily tickets, tendency to travel without valid tickets has increased and this is also leading to non-compliance of the requirement of travellers to be fully vaccinated. As a result, Railways is facing huge losses in revenue and it is more dangerous from the point of view of the spread of Covid-19 cases.
“It has therefore been decided to permit all who are fully vaccinated as per the definition of state government to travel in local trains. All fully vaccinated citizens may travel in local and passenger trains on all routes and through all kinds of tickets, including daily tickets.”
Last week, there were several complaints from passengers from the essential services category — government staff, people in medical and related fields, and other such — that they were unable to buy tickets as the railways had made it compulsory to go for monthly passes.
Now, anyone can show a double vaccine certificate or universal pass and get a ticket, which is expected to substantially lower the incidence of ticketless travel.
Subhash Gupta from the Rail Yatri Parishad said allowing daily tickets was a much-awaited decision. “We have been fighting for daily tickets for the past two months. It will not only lead to a rise in ridership gradually but will also give benefit to a cross-section of commuters,” he said.