Days after the Centre announced the guidelines for Unlock 4, the Indian Railways said that it is planning to run more special trains and the state governments are being consulted on this.
A senior Railway Ministry official said, “The Indian Railways is in consultation with the state governments.”
According to railway ministry sources, the national transporter is planning to operate 100 more trains in the coming days.
The Indian Railways had suspended the passenger, mail and express train services from March 25 in the wake of the nationwide lockdown amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Railways started to operate the Shramik Special trains from May 1 to transport the stranded migrant workers, students, pilgrims and tourists. It also began 15 pairs of Special Air Conditioned trains from May 12 and 100 pairs of timetabled trains from June 1.
Last week, the Centre gave approval for the eventual resumption of metro services from September 7, and the return of up to 50 per cent of teaching and non-teaching staff in schools outside the containment zones from September 21.
The government in its new guidelines has said that the states will no longer be permitted to impose lockdowns outside the containment zones without the Ministry of Home Affairs permission.
Fresh coronavirus infections recorded in the past 24 hours in India were 69,921. This was on an average a drop of several thousand cases after the numbers regularly inched closer to the 80,000-mark over the past five days.
India continues to be the third worst-hit country by the pandemic with a tally of 36,91,166 cases Health Ministry data showed on Tuesday. The death toll climbed to 65,288 with 819 new fatalities in the last one day.
The country has been recording an unprecedented surge in daily cases of Covid-19 since August 27. On three of these days the numbers were way past the 78,000-mark and almost touching 80,000 cases; while on August 27 and 29 the numbers were above 75,000 and 76,000 respectively.
As of Tuesday morning, out of the total confirmed cases, 7,85,996 are the active cases, while a total of 28,39,882 have recovered from the virus so far. With 65,081 recoveries in a day, the recovery rate has increased to 76.63 per cent.
Maharashtra continues to be the worst-hit with a total of 7,80,689 cases and 24,399 deaths; followed by Andhra Pradesh with 4,24,767 cases and 3,884 deaths. Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal, and Bihar come next.
According to the fresh data from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), India conducted 10,16,920 tests in a single day on Monday taking the total number of samples tested so far reached to 4,33,24,834.
On Monday, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare decided to deploy high-level Central teams to four states — Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha, which have been witnessing a sudden surge in the number of coronavirus cases and reporting high-mortality.
Only the US and Brazil have recorded more cases of Covid than India. While the US lead the board with 60,28,617, the South American nation has 39,08,272 corona cases.
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