LUDHIANA RAILWAY JUNCTION: OVER ₹9 LAKH PAID AS RAIL TICKET REFUND SINCE APRIL 18

The Ludhiana junction paid over ₹9 lakh in ticket refund till Tuesday amid rail traffic disruptions owing to the farmers’ sit-in on tracks at Shambhu.

Railway officials say the refund figure of ₹9,30,000, since the protests started on April 18, is only for those ticket cancellations that were made over the counter. The maximum ticket bookings (at least 75%) are made online, and the refund tally could be higher if we take these into account.

Meanwhile rail passengers continued to be harried lot on Tuesday as well.

Ramji Pandey, one of the passengers waiting at the platform, said, “My train (Kanpur Central Weekly SF Express) was to arrive at 3pm, but now they say, it won’t be here before 7pm.”

Another Lucknow-bound passenger Sachin, who was travelling with his friends, said, “We came here four hours ago. The train we were supposed to go by was cancelled and the one we are to take now is six hours late.”

On Tuesday, 45 trains via the Ludhiana junction were cancelled, including the Amritsar SF between Amritsar and Chandigarh, Amritsar Intercity Express between New Delhi and Amritsar, Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra Express, and the Amritsar Jan Shatabdi Express between Amritsar and Haridwar.

Sixty trains were diverted via the Jakhal-Dhuri-Ludhiana, Sahnewal-Chandigarh-Ambala, and Ambala-Chandigarh-New Morinda-Sirhind-Sahnewal lines. The Shambhu station lies on the busy Attari-Ambala line.

Similarly, 41 trains were cancelled and 60 were diverted on Monday, 44 trains were cancelled and 62 diverted on Sunday, 33 trains were cancelled and 56 diverted on Saturday, 21 trains were cancelled and 54 diverted on Friday, and 29 trains were cancelled and 28 diverted on Thursday.

While all the upward trains were either late or expected to be late, the Shatabdi Express (5:30 hours late), Kanpur Express (8 hours), Amarnath Express (6 hours), Kamakhya Express (8 hours), Malwa Express (6 hours), Swaraj Express (6 hours), Prayagraj Express (8 hours), Amrapali Express (3:30 hours) and Vande Bharat (2:30 hours) were affected the most.

The farmers started their sit-in at the Shambhu station on Wednesday. They have been sitting on the Shambhu border, which connects Punjab and Haryana, since February, when they were stopped from crossing into Haryana en route to their march to Delhi to demand a guarantee on minimum support price (MSP).

On March 10, the agitated farmers protested at 52 locations on railway lines across the state, bringing the rail traffic to a virtual halt for a few hours.

Read more news like this on HindustanTimes.com

2024-04-24T01:39:11Z dg43tfdfdgfd