The Railways has decided to cancel all old bookings for regular trains scheduled till June 30 and provide a full refund for it.
However, the Shramik Special trains which started from May 1 and the special trains which started operations from May 12 will continue to operate, an order from the railways said.
The tickets, which are to be cancelled, were booked during the lockdown period when the Railways was allowing bookings for journeys in June.
Regular mail, express, passenger and suburban services of the railways had been suspended from March 25 due to the coronavirus-triggered lockdown. Only freight and special parcel trains are in operation to ensure supply of essential commodities across the country.
Earlier, all bookings for regular trains were stopped till May 17, till lockdown 3.0 remains in force.
"The competent authority has desired that all tickets booked for trains for the period up to June 30, 2020, may be cancelled and full refund generated," said a notification issued by Director, Passenger Marketing, Railway Board.
Meanwhile, the Railways also added that passengers who are disallowed from travelling on trains because of symptoms associated with the novel coronavirus will receive a full refund for their tickets, the railways has said.
According to the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs, all passengers shall be compulsorily screened and only asymptomatic passengers shall be allowed to enter/board trains.
"If, during screening, a passenger has very high temperature/symptoms of COVID-19 etc., he shall not be allowed to travel despite having confirmed tickets. In such case full refund shall be provided to the passenger," the order stated.
It said that on a group ticket if one passenger is found unfit to travel and all other passengers on the same PNR also do not want to travel, in that case full refund shall be granted for all passengers.
In case of a group ticket if one passenger is found unfit to travel but the other passengers on the same PNR want to travel, full refund of fare shall be granted to the passenger who was not allowed to travel.
"For all the above cases, TTE certificates as per extant practice shall be issued to the passenger at the entry/checking/screening point itself mentioning number of passengers not travelled due to symptoms of COVID-19 in one or more passengers," it stated.
"Full fare for the part passenger/full who have not travelled shall be refunded by IRCTC in the customer's account," it said.