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NEW DELHI: The running of special trains before and during the Chhath-Bihar assembly poll period not only allowed the state’s people to celebrate their biggest festival back home but also enabled them to cast their vote — the railways playing a part in the state reporting a record voter turnout (67%), the highest since 1951.The railways has run around 2,000 special trains from different states to Bihar, out of 12,000 such festival specials. The service is scheduled till the end of this month. In addition, over three dozen unscheduled and unreserved trains from across the country to Bihar were run during Chhath and the polls. Data showed that more than 50 out of the 55 unscheduled trains were bound for Bihar.
Most of these unscheduled trains originated from the Northern Railway zone, including Delhi, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Karnal and Panipat. Some of these trains were operated just a couple of days before the two phases of the election — Nov 6 and Nov 11. Railway officials said running of both scheduled and unscheduled trains were as per norms.“Unscheduled special trains were put to service wherever there was a need for clearing increasing numbers of passengers at different stations after assessing demands. In unscheduled and unreserved trains, anyone can buy a ticket for travel,” an official said. The national transporter ran around two dozen of these unscheduled trains between Nov 3 and Nov 11. Officials claimed that the operations are as per requirement and they had announced to keep 2,000 such trains as standby for any emergency requirement. The number of scheduled special trains for the festive season in 2024 was around 7,000, and this year, nearly 70% more trains were operated for the benefit of passengers.It was also the first time when railways had announced an experimental scheme named as “Round Trip Package for the festival rush on discounted fare. Under this scheme, the booking start date was Aug 14 for onward travel between Oct 13 and Oct 26. The return journey ticket could be booked by using the connecting journey feature for the train between Nov 17 and Dec 1. A total of 21,687 round tickets for 33,950 passengers were booked under this scheme.
