Great step by Indian Railways! No cancellation fee for 155 trains, passengers to get full refund

In what comes as a great news for Indian Railways passengers amid the coronavirus outbreak, they will not be charged any cancellation fee for 155 cancelled trains. The Indian Railways has announced that passengers who booked tickets in any of these trains will get 100 per cent refund. The Railways has cancelled several trains between March 20 and March 31 in view of coronavirus and low occupancy.

The national transporter had cancelled around 99 trains on Wednesday night. "All passengers having tickets in these trains are being informed about it individually," an official said.

"All passengers having tickets in these 155 trains are being informed about it individually. No cancellation fee will be taken for these trains. Passengers will get 100-per cent refund," the official added.

The cancelled trains include tourist specials like Maharaja, Buddhist, Bharat Darshan, and state specials. Apart from this, the Tejas service between Mumbai-Ahmedabad and New Delhi-Lucknow and the recently launched Humsafar service between Indore-Varanasi was taken on Wednesday night.

The national transporters has also issued a set of guidelines to zonal headquarters for its catering staff, saying no employee having fever, cough, runny nose or difficulty in breathing "should be deployed in the business of food handling on the Indian Railways".

The novel coronavirus cases in India rose to 169 on Thursday after 18 fresh cases were reported from various parts of the country, according to the Health Ministry. The cases include 25 foreign nationals -- 17 from Italy, 3 from the Philippines, two from the UK, one each belonging to Canada, Indonesia and Singapore.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to address the nation at 8 pm on Thursday evening about different measures being take to tackle the outbreak.