The trains were sustaining losses of several lakhs per trip since the resumption of services post lockdown
Group General Manager (services) Awadesh Kumar in an internal official letter to Principal Executive Director (Coaching) had also said that the management had decided to cancel all departures of Tejas trains due to low occupancy levels. According to sources, losses were running into lakhs for every trip.
"The position may be reviewed after seeing the occupancy on these sectors in the future," the letter added.
The Tejas Express had become the first train to serve cooked food on long-distance trains since the Unlock and passengers onboard the train were provided with a medical safety kit that contains a face shield, masks, gloves, etc. However, the response had been low.
As a last-ditch effort, the IRCTC Western Zone did try to increase the occupancy of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Tejas Express by announcing tour packages last week between Mumbai and Vadodara-Ahmedabad in Gujarat. The IRCTC was taking only 50 per cent of the actual capacity following social distancing norms, but only 25 to 40 per cent out of the total 736 seats were occupied as against 50-80 per cent pre-pandemic.
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