Overview
- Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw inspected New Delhi station on October 21, citing 4,211 special trains operated between October 1 and 20 that served over 1 crore passengers, with about 7,800 additional specials planned in the coming days.
- Central Railway has scheduled 1,998 trips with a projected 30 lakh passengers and 705 trips completed, while Western Railway is running over 2,400 trips mostly north-bound; South Central Railway reported 1,010 trains and 4.80 crore passengers from September 21 to October 20.
- East Coast Railway is operating 367 festive specials and Northeast Frontier Railway 48 trains covering 620 trips, as zones continue to add capacity on high-demand routes.
- Stations have expanded holding areas, opened extra ticket counters, deployed mobile ticketing and RPF/GRP escorts, activated 24x7 war rooms and CCTV monitoring, and fixed platform assignments at key Mumbai terminals.
- Northern Railway has suspended platform tickets at five Delhi-NCR stations from October 15 to 28, with similar curbs at Bandra, Vapi and Surat, even as many migrants bound for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh report difficulty securing affordable seats and complain of crowding and delays.