Responding to an announcement by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Prime Minister said the high-speed, non-AC sleeper services would play a crucial role in improving connectivity while driving commerce and tourism across the country.
The railways also plans to introduce demand based passenger trains and doing away with the wait list tickets by 2024.
This is the first initiative for private investment for running passenger trains on the Indian Railways network.
In a statement released on Thursday morning, the Railways said that a full refund would be given to all tickets booked till June 30.
The Government is running 15 pairs of air-conditioned trains, for which bookings started from May 11 at 6 pm on the IRCTC website.
On Monday, the Indian Railways had announced that it will gradually resume passenger train services from May 12.
Bookings for the trains will start from May 11 at 4 pm and will be available on the IRCTC website.
According to the ministry, on an average 375 coaches are being converted into isolation wards in a day.
However, bare minimum level of services of suburban trains and Kolkata Metro Rail shall continue upto 2400 hrs of March 22, 2020
