Want to go home on Chhath? Railway’s ‘masterplan’ ready, 3000 trains in reserve, stations are being monitored from ‘war room’

Indian Railways Plan For Chhath Puja: As soon as the festival of Diwali is over, trains and buses are now filled with people returning home on the occasion of Chhath festival. A huge crowd has gathered at the stations, due to which there is no space to even set foot. But if you are also preparing to go home this Chhath, then there is no need to panic, because Indian Railways has prepared a ‘masterplan’ to deal with this crowd.

Railways have made such special arrangements, which have never been done before, to control the huge crowd gathering at the stations and to take the passengers home safely. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav herself has given information about this.

3000 trains on standby, will come back on track as soon as crowd increases

This year, for the convenience of passengers, Railways has already run 10,700 special trains, information about which is available on the IRCTC website. But the railways have not stopped here. Apart from this, 3000 more trains have been kept on full reserve i.e. standby.

This means that as soon as the crowd suddenly increases at any station, these reserve trains will be immediately sent there and the passengers will be dispatched, so that no stampede-like situation is created.

What is Railways’ War Room and how does it work?

To control this entire system, Railways has created ‘war rooms’ at three levels – division, zonal and board level. A main command center has been set up in Rail Bhawan, from where the railway network of the entire country is being monitored in real time 24 hours a day.

How does the war room work?
The Railway Minister explained this by giving an example:

• Surat case: On October 18, there was suddenly a huge crowd at Udhna station in Surat. Immediately command was given from the war room and the trains standing in reserve at nearby stations were called as Udhna and the crowd was dispersed within a few hours.
• Ambala case: One day a similar situation was seen in Ambala also. Then on the instructions of the War Room, the crowd was reduced by calling reserve trains from Jalandhar and surrounding stations.

There are more than 80 such small and big war rooms active across the country, which are helping the authorities to resolve crowding, passenger complaints and any potential incidents immediately.

Apart from this, this year, for the convenience of passengers going to Bihar, trains are being run to 18 places, whereas last year this number was only 7. This shows that Railways does not want to cause any trouble to the passengers this time on Chhath.