In the view of novel coronavirus pandemic, the Indians Railways has decided to relax the refund rules for passengers who had booked tickets to travel between March 21 and April 15. It is to be noted that the development comes after Indian Railways cancelled more than 250 trains due to coronavirus pandemic. The move from the Indian Railways is aimed to avoid crowding on trains and encourage social distancing.
The Indian Railways issued an advisory on Saturday which stated that it has relaxed refund rules for train tickets cancellation. In the advisory, it said that if a train is cancelled by Railways for journey period March 21 to April 15, refund across the counter can be taken on submission of ticket up to 45 days from the date of a journey instead of the present three hours.
"In case a train is not cancelled but the passenger desires to cancel his journey, TDR (Ticket Deposit Receipt) can be filed within 30 days from date of journey at the station, instead of present three days. TDR can also be submitted to the chief commercial officer for getting the refund within 60 days of filing of TDR subject to verification from train chart, instead of extant rule of 10 days," the Railways advisory added.
It is worth mentioning here that the passengers who wish to cancel tickets through 139 can get refunds across the counter within 30 days from the date of the journey instead of up to the scheduled departure of the train.
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Coronavirus has created havoc across the world with the total positive cases going up to 3 lakhs. So far, the death count has gone up to 11,000. Importantly, India witnessed a record jump in the total number of COVID-19 cases as 63 new coronavirus cases were confirmed on Friday. At present, there are 271 COVID-19 patients in India. Of these, 232 are Indians and 39 are foreign nationals.
(With PTI Inputs)
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