Indian Railways announces special trains amid record ticket bookings

Indian Railways and the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) are managing significant surges in passenger demand ahead of the Diwali and Chhath festivals. IRCTC reported a record-breaking single-day milestone, processing 2,006,353 ticket bookings during the advance reservation period. This surge follows a change in policy that shortened the advance reservation window from 120 days to 60 days.

To accommodate the high volume of travelers, the East Central Railway has announced several pairs of special festival trains. These services will run between October and November, connecting destinations such as Patna, Muzaffarpur, Jogbani, Sitamarhi, Chandigarh, Firozpur Cantt, Anand Vihar, Delhi, Laukha Bazar, and Rishikesh.

Online bookings now represent 89 percent of all train ticket transactions across the Indian Railways network. Officials noted that the Next Generation e-Ticketing (NGeT) system has demonstrated the capacity to handle these massive transaction volumes, despite peak concurrent demand occurring within the first 15 minutes of the daily booking window.