With millions of migrant workers heading home for Chhath Puja, North Central Railway on 27 October announced 62 festival special trains from Agra’s Idgah and Agra Cantt stations to multiple destinations across Bihar. The services, which run until 31 October, add more than 150,000 seats to one of the busiest seasonal corridors in India.
The specials include dedicated services to Patna, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur and Katihar, using 22-coach LHB rakes configured for high-density seating. All trains have an ‘unreserved superfast’ category to cater to last-minute travellers, and additional security staff have been deployed after crowd-control issues during last year’s exodus.
Railway officials say the move will help decongest Delhi-Kanpur stretch bottlenecks and reduce pressure on premium Tejas and Vande Bharat services, which had been running with 200 per cent occupancy. The extra capacity is critical for corporates managing blue-collar attendance at northern industrial clusters; plant HR teams have circulated revised leave charts and contingency rosters in anticipation of absentee spikes.
For travel-management companies, the specials offer a lower-cost alternative to dynamically priced air fares, which have surged 60–70 per cent on Delhi–Patna and Mumbai–Patna sectors this week. However, they note that the booking window is short and tickets are selling out within minutes of release on IRCTC.
Indian Railways has urged employers to stagger workforce returns after 2 November, indicating that empty rakes will be flipped to ‘reverse specials’ to handle post-festival back-to-work demand.
The specials include dedicated services to Patna, Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur and Katihar, using 22-coach LHB rakes configured for high-density seating. All trains have an ‘unreserved superfast’ category to cater to last-minute travellers, and additional security staff have been deployed after crowd-control issues during last year’s exodus.
Railway officials say the move will help decongest Delhi-Kanpur stretch bottlenecks and reduce pressure on premium Tejas and Vande Bharat services, which had been running with 200 per cent occupancy. The extra capacity is critical for corporates managing blue-collar attendance at northern industrial clusters; plant HR teams have circulated revised leave charts and contingency rosters in anticipation of absentee spikes.
For travel-management companies, the specials offer a lower-cost alternative to dynamically priced air fares, which have surged 60–70 per cent on Delhi–Patna and Mumbai–Patna sectors this week. However, they note that the booking window is short and tickets are selling out within minutes of release on IRCTC.
Indian Railways has urged employers to stagger workforce returns after 2 November, indicating that empty rakes will be flipped to ‘reverse specials’ to handle post-festival back-to-work demand.
