(12 May 2020) India reopened part of its colossal rail network on Tuesday and ran a limited trains service, as the country looked at easing its nearly seven-week lockdown while coronavirus infections are increasing.
Special trains will depart from selected big cities, including Delhi and Mumbai, and run to full capacity.
Passengers will be allowed to enter stations only if they are asymptomatic and clear thermal screening. They must maintain social distancing on board and will be given hand sanitizers on entry and exit.
Indian Railways also said that passengers must download a government-run contact tracing smartphone app before boarding the trains.
Critics say the Aarogya Setu app endangers civil liberties in how it uses location services and centralizes data collection.
The decision to open select trains was taken on Sunday as India looked to pull back from a strict lockdown of 1.3 billion people that has left millions stranded in cities.
On Tuesday, thousands of passengers waited in long queues outside New Delhi railway station, the hub of India's rail network.
"What if we die here? My kids are crying there, that why I'm going back home. Whatever happens, at least we will be together with our family through thick and thin," said Ram Babu Kumar Singh, who works as an air conditioning mechanic in New Delhi but lives in eastern Bihar state.
Singh was among many who expressed relief over the resumption of trains which were suspended in late March along with India's road and air services as part of a nationwide lockdown.
Its strictness has helped keep confirmed coronavirus infections relatively low for a population of 1.3 billion.
But in recent days, as the lockdown has eased and some businesses have resumed, infections and deaths due to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus, have shot up.
India has confirmed 70,756 cases of coronavirus including 2,293 deaths, but experts believe its outbreak is far greater.
Almost a fifth of India's confirmed infections are people from densely populated cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Pune and Ahmedabad, which also are major centers of economic activity.
The announcement also led to a mad rush for online booking on Monday as more than 45,000 people purchased train tickets within hours of sales resuming, according to the Press Trust of India news agency.
The train network often described as India's lifeline totals 67,000 kilometers (42,000 miles) and normally carries more than 20 million passengers daily.
The lockdown in India started in late March and immediately emptied the usually teeming railway stations.
It also destroyed the livelihoods of millions of Indians that rely on daily wages for sustenance, left migrant workers stranded in big cities and created a hunger crisis for tens of thousands.
Caught off guard by the large-scale displacement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government is now increasingly looking at easing the lockdown.
It recently ordered special trains to take migrant workers, students and others stranded by the lockdown to their home states after mounting pressure from the opposition over the migrant exodus.
On Monday, Modi told state leaders in a video call that they will get a greater say in determining the extent of restrictions and relaxations after May 17 and the government would look at a "gradual withdrawal" of the lockdown.
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