Tejas Express stopped in its tracks due to low occupancy

Lucknow: The Indian Railway Catering And Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) has cancelled the operation of the country's first private train Tejas Express from Monday.

The IRCTC has decided to end the operations of the Lucknow-Delhi and Mumbai-Ahmedabad Tejas Express due to a shortage of the passengers.

Tejas Express had resumed operations in October after its operation was suspended due to coronavirus.

The IRCTC is a public sector undertaking of the Ministry of Railways.

Earlier, the IRCTC had said in a statement that the management has decided to cancel the operations of all Tejas trains due to a shortage of passengers.

IRCTC has cancelled the Lucknow-New Delhi (82501/82502) Tejas Express from November 23 while the Ahmedabad-Mumbai (82901/82902) Tejas Express from November 24.

"The management has decided to cancel all departures of the IRCTC Tejas trains due to low occupancy levels resulting from Covid-19 pandemic. The company will review its decision after seeing the occupancy level of other trains of the Indian Railways operating in both these routes," IRCTC said in a statement.

The two Tejas trains between Lucknow-New Delhi and Ahmedabad-Mumbai were resumed from October 17 in view of the festival rush.

The operation of both the trains was stopped on March 19 due to the pandemic. IRCTC had taken several steps to run Tejas Express keeping in mind the coronavirus outbreak.

Sources said that the occupancy of Tejas Express was around 25 to 40 per cent after the resumption of operation as against 50-80 per cent before the coronavirus lockdown.